Kittens

In our kitchen, there are two small, two- or three-day-old kittens.

They are likely going to die - a third one died this morning.

Don’t misunderstand. We are not watching them suffer with indifference. Quite the contrary.

Our children, they of the compassionate and ever-hopeful hearts, are making heroic efforts to preserve the little lives. The kittens are housed in soft bedding, constantly stroked and encouraged and generously fed, with a dropper, cream (which is as close as we can get to mother’s milk at the moment).

If human effort and belief alone could save these kits, our kids will make it so. We’ve seen them love an animal back to health from the precipice before.

Still, the odds are not good.

As I watch this unfold, it occurs to me how much we lambs, those whom God has set aside and marked as His, begin like the kittens.

We come into this dimension wholly incapable of preserving our lives, blindly searching in the darkness for the milk we require to sustain us.

God has to provide everything.

We are wholly helpless and at the mercy of the world. God must do it all. He must not only provide the food but also bring the food to us. He must groom us, make us walk or rest, even clean up our messes.

Left alone we would die, even in the hands of some who may have compassion, because we need more than the material world can provide.

But God does not abandon us. He cares for our needs, no matter how ornery we are. He keeps us in His den, nurturing, training, toughening.

Then one day, if we make it to adulthood, spiritually mature, He has a cat - indifferent to the world, true to its nature, tough and strong as needed, soft and warm and cozy in the cold.

Watch your cat, as aloof as it seems, it still knows where it is fed.

Are we just as dependent on God for all - even our next breath?