"God treats us like Feral Cats" KC wrote...

Yes, like the feral cats we are…

Or maybe I should say, sadly, we act like feral cats with God.  For some of us, some of the time, for some of us, we act like this all of the time.

He only wants the best for us, but we don’t trust Him.  And, for damn sure, we want our freedom.

He may be feeding us our daily kibble (maybe even warmed-up soft food in the winter, maybe even treats –Temptations is so aptly named!), giving us shelter from the rain and snow and hail, misters in the desert heat, and fans for those suffocating humid muggy days, but we don’t trust Him.

And for many of us, myself certainly, trust is hard to gain and easily lost, especially in childhood. 

Some of us are born with the gift of trusting others freely, quickly, easily, instinctively.  Maybe we label them extroverts. 

Others are more hesitant, shy, and cautious (maybe even fearful, and sometimes rightly so!) about making that leap of trust.  (You see, I’m already putting my introvert thumb on the scale here.) 

Labels are merely that, and God’s magnificent creation utterly exceeds our finite, time-bound attempts to get a handle on things, to put things in boxes.  And that’s OK, that’s baked in. 

Whether you believe in a literal creation (Genesis) or not, you can’t help looking around you and admitting to yourself that we live in a fallen world. 

Nor can you look at you own behavior, and if you are honest with yourself, admit that you fail time and again, do things you regret, sometimes (speaking for myself) things you know are awful and wrong and unforgivable (to our human perspective). 

Admit it, we all fall short.  We can express that in a single word, we sin. 

We sin, we fall short over and over again.  But maybe the real sin is that we don’t always (or ever) acknowledge that; we live in denial.

Maybe outside versus inside is a better analogy [than feral versus tame].

Holding Gentleman Caller/Reese in the Catio

Hiss followed by eye-blinks.  [I'd told KC about my unexpected encounter with a very feral cat we called "Gentlemen Caller" who'd wandered inside our very large, fully-enclosed catio when I'd left the door open.  But I'd mistaken him for our similar-looking "Reese Whiskerspoon", how I'd assumed was freaking out because they felt I was blocking their "escape route" back to the cat flap and back inside the house. I managed to grab hold of them finally, at which point they hissed ferociously but I said soothing words and gave them slow eye-blinks - messaging them "See I'm not your enemy, and I mean you no harm", which they returned.  But up close to them now, I realized my mistake, and rather than carry them over to the cat flap, I walk back to the still-open catio door and before I'd even had a chance to set them down, they leapt out of my arms and dashed back outside the catio at top speed.  Nevertheless, having made the mistake of trying to hold/restrain feral cats before, I was astonished that they had waited rather than just used their razor-sharp claws to regain their freedom the moment I'd first grabbed hold of them!]

Sometimes you have to be very sick (or dead) before we’ll let God touch us, embrace us with His Love.

It’s not pity for us, or maybe it is. 

Why do we end up falling asleep on His doorstep???  Or on our front step – just outside our gate.