The Lion and the Bear

"Thy servant slew both the lion and the bear: and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, seeing he hath defied the armies of the living God." 1 Samuel 17:36

       One of the greatest soldiers who ever lived was David. He was so strong that he could break a bow of steel with his arms, and he was so brave that he was not afraid to go and fight a giant, with nothing but a sling and a few stones.
       Before he became king he had been a shepherd boy. It had been his duty to lead the sheep out to the hillside every morning and stay with them all day so that no harm would come to them, and then bring them safely back home to the fold at night.
       One day a lion came to kill the sheep, and David stood between the lion and the sheep and killed the lion. At another time a bear got into the sheepfold. David took a club and killed him. These were the first battles that David fought, and they show what a brave boy he was, for it takes courage to stand up against a lion and a bear. After many years he had many other hard battles, with Goliath, and with the Philistines, and with the Syrians, but I am sure that none of these fights were quite so hard as those first ones with the lion and the bear. If he had let the lion or the bear conquer him, he never would have lived to fight with Goliath, and to be a great king.
       Every boy and girl is like King David in one way. The first battles they have to fight are with the lion and the bear.
       Let me tell you first about the lion. It isn't a lion in a cage such as you see when you visit a zoo. It is a lion inside of us. It is bad temper. Almost all of us have somewhere inside of us a temper that sometimes gets the better of us. You know how a lion attacks a man. He waits for his chance, and when the man isn't looking or thinking, he springs upon him. That is the way bad temper and passion come upon us. They spring upon us and get the mastery of us before we know it.
       If you go to the zoo, you will see a lion shut in a strong enclosure. You are not afraid of him because he is locked in behind strong bars, deep pits and strong fencing. But if a zoo keeper should
leave that door open where he feeds the lion, and the lion should escape, then you would be afraid. That is the way with the lion of temper. He must be shut up and guarded day and night, so that he cannot hurt anyone. And if our tempers do sometimes get the mastery of us, we ought, as David did with that lion, to fight and overcome them.
       Paul said, " He that overcometh his spirit is better than he that taketh a city."
       Then there is the bear. We must not forget about him. David killed the bear, too. The best thing about a good little child is his gentleness. You know little bears are not gentle. They are cross and clumsy and go around making trouble wherever they are. They are very much like some little boys, who are rough and cross and ill-mannered.
       They used to say that an old mother bear never lets the little bear out of the den till he has been licked into shape. Someone has said that there are hosts of fathers and mothers who let their children out into the world, before they have been made to mind, and that is why they are so ill-mannered and cruel and unkind, for all the world like little bears. David's second great fight was with the bear. One of the first things that everybody ought to do is to fight and overcome his bearishness.
       Paul said in another place, "Be ye kind." Kindness is one of the best weapons with which to overcome bearishness. Some of the biggest, strongest men in the world have been the gentlest, because they knew how to be kind.
       One day Abraham Lincoln was riding with one of his friends along a road in Illinois, when he stopped, jumped down from his horse, and began to feel around in the grass under a bush.
       His companion said to him, ''Did you lose something, Mr. Lincoln?" ''No," he said, "I saw a little bird fall out of her nest as we passed, and I am trying to find her and put her back again."
       It was little acts such as this that made him so gentle.
       David, I imagine, killed the lion and the bear with a club. We can kill our lions and bears with kindness and gentleness.

Slow to Anger, giving people lots of time to change...