Mowgli was bought by a bull

I had this friend in college that loved to take lines from secular songs and make them spiritual. It was a fun game to play. We learned after a while that most songs had lyrics in them that could, in some way or another, be turned into a spiritual thing. Probably because a lot of songs are about love and well, the story of Jesus is all about love. Obviously, not all songs apply in this situation, but the point is that it was fun to take something not spiritual and see a comparison. Let me give you my own example.

The other day I finished reading "The Jungle Books." If you watched Disney movies as a kid, then you know the story of Mowgli, raised by wolves in the jungle. In my quiet time today I came across Acts 20:28 "...the church of God which He purchased with His own blood," and I thought of Mowgli. What does Mowgli have to do with us being purchased by the blood of Christ? If you know well the story of Mowgli, then you know that Bagheera "bought" Mowgli into the wolf pack. A man-cub, who by the way does not belong in the jungle, was bought for the price of a bull. Then he was allowed to live among the wolf pack as one of them, the Free People. Are we not sinners purchased by the blood of Christ, and then allowed to live as saints, though we don't deserve it?

This morning though, what I thought more about, was the debt that Mowgli lived in the rest of his life. At the end of the story, Mowgli wants to leave the jungle and live among his people. But Mowgli wouldn't leave because he owed his life to the jungle and Bagheera who bought him with the bull. I'm not looking any deeper than that, because really the story doesn't line up with the story of Jesus. But my initial, surface level, thoughts were, what if we lived our lives with the same mentality as Mowgli. All throughout the book, he knew and remembered that he was bought at a price. He owed his life to the jungle and Bagheera. I don't remember often enough that I was purchased. That my life is not my own, but that I owe it to the One who bought me. How different would my life look if I remembered better?