TGIF

I’m attempting to write this piece under no small handicap as I try to reach the keyboard with Miss Kitty pressed firmly across my chest.

An hour or so ago she approached me as I started to write and jumped into my lap.

This would hardly be noteworthy except for the fact that it’s the first time she’s done so in months.

 

I am not prepared to tell her that I have better things to do than pet her…indeed, it’s at the top of the list of the best things I’ll do all day.

I almost lost her to extreme anxiety and a broken heart…she lost almost half her body weight because she was too afraid to come and eat. Sometimes when she would eat, she would throw it right back up from the stress she was feeling.

She was stressed because of my habit of befriending every stray cat that happened upon our home.

I will feed them, “fix” them and invite them to consider our home their home.

Caring for cats helps ameliorate my all too frequent contempt of two legged creatures and preserves and nurtures whatever soul I have left after 61 years.

It’s not very healthy or very honest, but it keeps me from drinking and writing incoherent diatribes on social media to feel better.

I’ve stopped caring whether it is “spiritual” or not because I preach on the weekend, have a prayer app on my phone, and my brethren say that the lout in the White House is a Christian too.

These things are shrouded in mystery, like the Trinity…

I digress…

Miss Kitty was terribly anxious because there were now so many cats living in and around here that she felt like there was no longer any place for her.

One of them that I highly favored would lay in wait for her and  attack her… others would knock her off her dish while she was eating, even though they had a dish of their own.

She retreated back to the bushes she had emerged from years ago.

I would see her outside and she would run from me as if I were an unknown person who could harm her.

As the weather turned cold I was worried that she would die in the frost…I had to do something.

So, when she would sneak in from sheer hunger, I locked her in and the other cats out.

She has had my full attention every night for a month, she has her space back to herself.

She has spent most of that time hiding in the bathroom.

Until today…she’s still on my lap.

Why am I sharing this? What’s the “spiritual” point?

This is a “Christian” blog after all…

Do you ever feel like God loves everybody more than you?

Do you ever feel like He goes out of His way to help others and leaves you to fend for yourself?

Do you ever feel like you don’t matter anymore…which makes you wonder if you ever mattered at all?

That’s how Missy felt…but it wasn’t true.

It’s not true about you and Jesus either…

“Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! For the Lord has comforted his people and will have compassion on his afflicted.

But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me.”

“Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me.”

(Isaiah 49:13–16 ESV)

Can a man forget his beloved cat?

Has the Lord forgotten you?

Nope.

Make your own application…