Truth and the Purring of a Cat

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

The Right Way to Start

The Right Way to Start – 1/5/2022

Merry Christmas (that’s the last time I’ll say this for a year). Today is the 12th Day of Christmas, you know…12 drummers drumming. We’ve already begun a new calendar year, but we are still celebrating the birth of the Messiah, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That seems completely fitting, doesn’t it? As we start something new, we celebrate the coming of God Incarnate. 

Gary Oliver, at a conference a few years ago, commented that we need to have a “waking” rhythm. By this he meant that we should have a routine or pattern for how we wake each day that sets our tone for the remainder of the day. I like that idea, but it also got me to thinking about whether we should have a “starting rhythm.” 

I ran track for a couple of seasons in high school and we had a starting rhythm before a race. There was the warm-up and there was the short pattern of movements at the starting block – to your mark, set and then the starting pistol. Maybe we should learn a lesson from this. 

As those who are committed to walking by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, perhaps we should start anything new by pausing to remember who we follow, who we worship, who we trust. Maybe having the new year start in the middle of the Twelve Days of Christmas is a good thing. After all, the Incarnation was the starting of a new thing as well.

I’m still teasing “what this looks like” out in my own thinking. But I know that there must be some intentional acknowledgement of our dependence on Father, our submission to the will of Jesus and our openness to the direction of the Holy Spirit. Does this mean offering a prayer? Probably. Does this mean reading a Word of Scripture? Again, probably. But these aren’t “preliminary conventions.” Many of us are familiar with a prayer or devotional thought offered at the beginning of a meeting of Christians. How do we, instead of practicing these as a convention, make these meaningful moments of genuine communion with God. And… what else might a “starting rhythm” look like? I’m personally not going to begin each new spiritual or church venture by singing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” – though maybe I should. For today, it’s enough to ask the Spirit to help us understand how we do new things in a spirit which celebrates Jesus.

Pursue Christ – He is enough,

            Pastor Jeff

PS – Listen to for KING and COUNTRY’s “Little Drummer Boy” as a Twelfth Day of Christmas celebration.