Truth and the Purring of a Cat – 1/12/2022
We have a cat; her name is Joy, and it turns out that she is aptly named. She purrs…a lot. We’ve taken to calling her our therapy cat and her communication pattern as “purr therapy.” Just the other day, my wife commented that maybe we should see Joy as an example of our walk with God. I was really interested in her comment because I had been reflecting on exactly the same thing for a few weeks actually.
Let me explain, Joy has a pattern every morning and evening. While I am still under the covers but starting to stir (or as soon as I get under the covers at night), she starts to “talk,” climbs up on my chest, lays down and begins to purr. I don’t have to do anything but lay there and she just purrs and purrs. It sounds like an outboard engine on a small boat.
What causes her the happiness? I don’t know, but she seems to take delight in simply being close. After she warms up her tummy (usually about five minutes) she shifts to the base of the bed, by my feet and just keeps purring. What prompted Joanie’s comments and my reflections is just that, shouldn’t we just want to be close to our Father, and shouldn’t that be enough to produce joy in us?
I wonder if much of the struggle we face in our Christian journey is simple idolatry. We look for our happiness to come from positive circumstances, from personal successes, from achieving particular objectives, from retreating to distractions. You get the idea and can probably fill in some very specific examples from your own experience. We may express our need for God, our belief in God, our dependence on God, even our submission to God, but we don’t really delight in God. I think its time to recover “delight” as a fundamental Christian attitude, and “beauty” as an essential Christian principle. C.S. Lewis said it better than I:
It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. C.S. Lewis, The Eternal Weight of Glory
And…while we say our dear Joy is beautiful, but not smart (at least not as cats go), it turns out she may have more wisdom about life that we give her credit for. Now, if you’ll excuse, I am going to enjoy a moment of purr therapy.
Pursue Christ – He is enough,
Pastor Jeff