Max and God

I am a cat owner. Well no one actually owns a cat, so let’s just say I provide them food, clean litter, and pay their vet bills.  Recently, my wife and I had to put our cat, Max, to sleep.  We had Max for eight years, after finding him as a stray. During those years, he provided much joy and happiness in our household, but he also taught me something about my faith, and about who God is.

Max was a very active and fun loving cat.  He would play with just about anything, rubber bands, the plastic ring on milk jugs, rolled up tissues, and Q-tips, often fishing these items out of the trash.  It didn’t matter that something better might come sometime in the future, he would use what he could find in the present to amuse himself, at that moment.  I can’t help but wonder if we all shouldn’t be a little more like Max.  It seems, often times we essentially ignore the present for the sake of our hope in the future.  While resurrection promises to be something fantastic; we can’t just ignore all the ways God is at work in the world in the present, or all the places (places of hunger, war, poverty, addiction, etc.) in our world that are still in desperate need of God’s work.  While it might be God’s work, it is our hands in the present that God uses to accomplish that work. 

Max was also a very persistent cat.  It didn’t matter what you were doing or planning on doing, he would make himself a nuisance until you ran the laser pointer for him to chase, or opened the door for him, only to open the same door again a few minutes later when he wanted back in.  While it was all about Max, he also forced me to recognize that Christianity isn’t all about me or even humanity.  In the story of Noah’s ark (Gen 6:9-9:17), God instructs Noah to build an ark so that all the animals of the world could be saved along with Noah and his family.  God cares for all of creation, despite everything that has happened in creation, God still affirms all of creation to be “very good” (Gen 1:31).  How we care for the animals and environment around us says something about who we are and who we think God is. 

All of this has helped me to recognize that God’s promise of resurrection isn’t just a human affair, but will include all of creation (Isa 11:6-9, Rev 5:13).  Even now, God is “making all things new” (Rev 21:5). So, there will be a time when my wife and I will be reunited with Max and all those animals/pets that any of us have a special connection to, along with the entire creation. God is the God of all creation, big and small.  Thanks Max for helping me to see God just a little bit better.