Lessons Learned from Trying to Put the Cat in a Duffle Bag

Let’s just say that she was a little less than impressed...

My cat loves bags. You put any sort of bag down and she will immediately go in it to explore, trying to discover some sort of hidden mystery in it. If the bag is full and sitting up, she will swat at it with her paw, nudge it with her head, whatever it takes to knock it down, and again she will be inside looking through it.

So yesterday I was taking pictures of my cat, and I figured a neat picture would be her in one of my bags. So I emptied out a carrying bag that holds in it my power saw, got out some cat treats, put them inside. Then I grabbed the cat and put her inside with them. I figured I could call it “The cats still in the bag” shot...

Yeah, yeah I know, that has to be one of the worst puns in the history of humanity... or at least it would be if we didn’t have people using words like “Punnie” as they tell all sorts of horrible ones that seem to surpass my own meagre ability to use horrible word play... Although I have been known to make an eye or two roll with the sheer atrociousness of mine...

At any rate, nothing would keep the cat in the bag....

As much as she might love being in them, she didn’t like the idea of being put inside of one and she was generally unimpressed with me for it. I could tell because I got the look... if you have a cat then you know the look, the cross between “What do you think you’re doing?” “Who do you think you are?” and “You better not sleep too soundly tonight...”

It kind of got me thinking after the fact... you know, after the terror of incurring the cat’s wrath subsided...

Sometimes life is about waiting for something to happen rather than trying to force it to happen for whatever reason.

When we are told of the fruits of the Spirit, (Galatians 5:22-23) patience (or long suffering in my Bible) is right up there. Over and over again we are told to be patient. (Isaiah 40:31) We are told that just as the farmer cannot make his fields grow faster through impatience, neither can we make things happen in our lives when we try to compel them. Things happen when God wants them to happen, how God wants them to happen, if God wants them to happen. (James 5:7-8)

That’s hard for us at times. At least I know it is for me. There are times when I want something so bad that I just don’t know what to do with myself, and the hardest thing in the world is to be patient, and to wait for the right time for everything to be revealed to me. There are things that I want to happen so desperately that I find myself growing anxious, wanting to take matters into my own hand, figuring I can make it happen if I do. Maybe then my life could be all that I dreamed it could be.

Though there are some things that I can do to maybe bring about all these things that I want and I hope on, the truth is that ultimately it all rests in God’s hands. If He wants for me to have it, if He knows that I need to have it to grow as a person and be the person He intends for me to be, then He will provide it unto me when the time is right and when He knows I will benefit the most from it.

It’s a tough lesson to understand at times but then that’s why God teaches it to us, rather than just expecting us to know it...

It’s perhaps a lot to take away from being unable to get my cat to stay in a duffle bag long enough to get a picture of her peeking out from it, but then it’s a bit funny how God will use the smallest of things to remind us of some of the more important lessons that we need to carry with us. I’m just grateful for the reminder...

Alone

“A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.”
Proverbs 17:17

We are never quite so alone as we are when we believe that we are alone....

I found myself talking to a friend the other day. I can always tell when he is going through a rough patch because we tend to talk more during those times. The thing about it is that he doesn’t talk about what he’s going through, at least not without considerable effort to pry it out of him. So often times we talk without really talking about anything at all. We joke around or we share songs we enjoy with each other, we talk about baseball or football or about whatever books we’ve read or movies we’ve seen recently. It really doesn’t matter a whole lot, we cover a host of random and, often times, inconsequential topics.

Truth is we haven’t seen each other in years, and, chances are, if there was no internet we probably wouldn’t have spoken in that long either. Yearly we might have exchanged Christmas or Easter cards or talked on the phone once in a blue moon, a conversation perhaps left with “Hi, how are you?” “Not bad, what’s new with you?” “Nothing much I guess” and we’d go another long stretch without talking. I’d probably never know when he was depressed or when he was down about life or that, at times like that, he didn’t feel like he had anybody to really talk that could understand, and, with no pressure to talk about what was bothering him, just have a completely normal, albeit pointless conversation.

You see, there are times when all of us just need to feel normal. There are times when life comes and hits us from behind, knocking us off our feet, and we just sort of feel like we are alone, like nobody is going to understand who we are and what we are going through. In those moments we just need to feel like we are who we are at the best of times, like we are somehow our usual self. It may not address what’s going on in our lives, but it lets us know that whatever we are facing, it’s just not as big as perhaps we thought it would be.

It’s in these times that we need someone else, even if we don’t quite admit it... It’s in these times that we need to be there for someone else, even if they aren’t willing to say so....

We aren’t alone. God gives us one another as He tells us that “A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.” (Proverbs 17:17) It’s here then that we have to know that there are people sent into our lives to help us when we are in need of understanding and friendship, that we might know that we are never quite as alone as we feel, and that we are sent into the lives of others so that they can be strengthened and uplifted even when life just seems to be too much for them.

When I think about that I think of Ruth and Naomi. (Ruth 1)

Having lost everything and now finding herself a widow, Ruth could have started over. Yet she knew that if she did her mother-in-law, whom she loved so dearly, would be left with nothing, destitute and alone, to lament the life that had now passed her by in the loss that had to still choke her spirit. Still Naomi insisted that Ruth go. After all, she couldn’t have much of a life with her. She pretended as if it was fine, as if she wouldn’t have felt quite so alone as she would. Ruth still refused, uttering those famous words to her, “Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God:” (Ruth 1:16)

Sometimes we just need to be there, we need to give of ourselves, to offer of ourselves whatever we can so that others don’t feel alone. We might not know what they are going through or what they are facing, they might not tell us, yet they need to feel as if, even for a moment, they are living a normal life. Ours has to be to help them, to give that to them in the love that we have for them, even when we might think we have something else to do or something else that seems like it might perhaps be a better use of our time, because there is no better use of it than this.

It’s then that we show the love unto one another that Christ intended for us to offer in the Spirit of God’s grace given unto us and shared with one another...