Today the Lord in His grace and kindness brought to my memory the time when I babysat for some cats that belonged to a couple i knew who was out of town. I was a bystander and observer of something awesome, a wonderful picture of Gods love for His people.
One of the cats, cj, was an outdoor cat as well as an indoor cat, so the wife of the couple had told me he could go outside. So I let him out in the evening, and he did not come back that night. Figuring he was used to going outside, I went to sleep and let him roam free.
In the morning, I opened the front door to go to work, and such a sorry sight lay before me!!! This poor cat, mangled and broken, was upon the doorstep, bloody, whimpering, nearly dead. Oh, poor cj! There he was, just so torn up. I immediately called her and took him to a vet nearby. It felt so cruel to have to pick him up to put him in the car
he must have been in excruciating pain. He had obviously been hit by a car, and his legs were clearly shattered. I recall that the vet later told me that the bones in his one back leg were all broken in little pieces, and the other was broken in a couple spots. Poor little cat. The vet theorized that he had been chasing a girl cat and gotten hit not paying attention to the dangers of the road but to his conquest.
This stirs up my conscience toward Christ this day. How often I am running after the things of the flesh, paying no heed to the warnings of Christ! And wham! Then I am hit, struck down, broken and bleeding, in terrible pain
Back to cj. one thing that is quite exciting to me about this story is that little cj, even though he was undoubtedly in tremendous pain, the likes of which I cannot even wrap my mind around, he dragged himself, along with his broken shattered hip and back legs, all the way to the front door, where he knew those that loved him, and would help him, lived. I have no idea how far away he was when hit, no idea how long his journey must have been. He could have been down the block; he could have been miles away. But what I do know is, this cat knew that the only place where he would get help was on the doorstep of the ones who loved him. So no matter how long and painful his journey was to reach them, he was determined, and so worked through the pain, likely worked through the night, to get where he needed to go. I cannot imagine what it would feel like to literally drag broken smashed legs behind you for miles on end
wow, just to think of it turns the stomach for the physical pain alone. And what if he had not made it before I should go to work? Then what? But he pressed on, however long and painful, for his goal of help through love.
This is stunning to me, and such a picture of what we ought to do when wounded by our own sins: we should drag ourselves, shattered by our choices of the flesh, beaten, bloodied, trashed, to His feet. He cares for His children. He will take us to His side, and He is the great Physician! Let me learn from cj the cat.
Another thing is, the couple told the vet to fix cj at all costs. They couldnt afford it, the payment was so much, but they worked out a payment plan with the vet. They were willing to do anything necessary to ensure cj lived. Cj was put back together by the vet, and though he bears the scars and cant quite run as well as he once did (sin leaves lasting scars and pain sometimes), he is getting stronger and stronger, and has now learned an important lesson. I hope that I will learn to learn this way, learning from the pain of disobeying God and learning to disobey less and less and be sanctified by His holy influence and power to save.
He is mighty, His love is mighty.
Let us learn to love in obedience and experience the blessings of that, and let us run to Him when we have gone after the flesh, and be healed and rebuilt by His love.
Oh, boy, what a Love
oh, let His name be praised.
john 14:23..let us keep His Word, and He will make His abode with us.
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