God created the wild beasts as an important part of His very good creation. But when humans took things into their own hands and the world was broken by their fall, the wild beasts became something they were not intended to become—a symbol of the brokenness of creation. 

But God never stopped caring about them. In fact, Jesus even emphasized that if God cares about the animals, how much more does He care about you and me!

Some of the best Bible studies happen when we notice something we haven’t seen before, and we spend some time following the thread. Daniel Ryan Day says that recently, that happened to him when he was reading an all-to-familiar section in Mark. There he paused at what seemed like a random reference to "wild beasts." But what he discovered as he followed the surprisingly common reference to "wild beasts" throughout Scripture, was how those "wild beasts" point us to Jesus.