Last night, I was feeding our cats, of which we have too many. Knowing that it was feeding time, our oldest cat, Lilly, came up and started rubbing on my legs, in appreciation for her coming dinner. You who have cats may know that if the food in the bowl has been there for long, they won’t eat it. Ours won’t anyway. So, there gets to be a layer at the bottom that they just won’t touch and, every few days, I have to throw that out. I picked up the bowl and emptied it in the trash. While I was at it, I also emptied out the little bit that was left in the plastic containers where we keep the food, getting ready to open a new bag and re-fill them. Guess what Lilly did while I was dumping out all this food? She kept rubbing on my legs and was even trying to get me to pet her. To her, it looked like I had just thrown out all the food she had to eat but, because we have been through this routine so many times, she knew that she was actually going to get more food, fresher and better than she had. She is a cat and yet she has figured out that, no matter what the situation may look like to her, I am going to take care of her.
As God’s children, we should have learned the same lesson about Him that Lilly has learned about me, and yet, many of us haven’t. For those of us who are His children, God always works everything out for our good (Romans 8:28), though it often isn’t apparent in the middle of whatever we’re going through. God often has to get the bad things out of our lives, so that He can bring in the good. Most of us have many times in our past when He has done that but we tend to forget quickly. We can look back on the times when He has walked with us and worked out situations that we thought were impossible or didn’t give us what we thought we wanted so that He could give us something better later (sometimes much later). Remembering those times can give us the confidence that He will do the same now. Continue to embrace Him, even when things don’t look good. If you are His child, He will take care of you.
Just a little thought, inspired by a little cat.
