When we moved into our home, we inherited 2 outdoor cats. They keep the rodents and snakes away from us, and in exchange, I give them food and water. One of the cats used to belong to the last owner of the house and just didn't make the move with her owner. And the other cat is what we thought was a feral cat, but now that he's become quite domesticated within such a short time, I wonder if he's just a stray cat.
Meet the stray. I named him Canaan, which is God's Promised Land. See...he has one ear that is half gone...very broken indeed. So, I gave him a name signifying God's UNbroken promise to His people...His promised land. This seemed to fit our little stray kitty.
Several days ago, Canaan didn't come by for his breakfast. Then the next day, he was seen limping somewhere on our property...still not coming up to the house to eat. We aren't sure what was wrong with him, and there was no way on God's green earth that he was going to let us capture him and take him to the vet. He's a wild thing. So, I launched into prayer for this little guy. I asked the children to pray for him, and I found myself crying and praying for this cat.
Then a question was presented in the quiet of my soul: WHY is it that I care so much about this stray cat that I've only known for 4 months? There are feral cats and stray cats all over the place, and I don't cry for them. I can drive past them and not think a thing of it. And, after having lived in the woods/country for so long, I have grown very accustomed to seeing dead animals of all kinds on the road nearly every day. I don't cry for them. So, why was it that I prayed for this stray cat and would wake up first thing in the morning wondering if he was feeling better??
Then a lesson I had learned during our adoption came to the forefront of my mind again. See, I cry because Canaan is one of mine. Yes, he's a stray, but he's my stray. I had grown to know his personality and little quirks. I had come to feed him and make sure he had plenty of water on the hot Texas days. He was no longer just some stray cat. He was Canaan. He had a name, and he meant something to me.
Have you ever realized how we do this sort of thing in life? We can flip through TV channels and see starving children in Africa, say a quick "oh how sad" and then find another channel with a football game and never once think again about the starving child. Why? Well, let's think about this for a second. What if that were MY child sitting over in Africa with nothing to eat?? You'd better believe that I'd beg, borrow and plead to get money to ensure my child would eat. TODAY. Right? Isn't this how we work? We can turn a deaf ear or a blind eye simply because we don't actually know that starving child or that orphan or that teenager sold into human trafficking. We don't know them, and therefore we can live comfortably without thinking much about them. We don't have to get messy in their lives.
Canaan brought this message home to me. And God reminded me that if I care so much for a stray cat, how much more should I care for people who are hurting! The orphan, the widow, the forgotten, the lonely, the victim of human trafficking, all those who are in chains both literal and emotional. THESE are precious to Him. And they should be precious to me.
To enter their lives may very well be messy. We learned this when we hosted an orphan 2 summers ago. First her photo was simply another face of an orphan. Then we said yes to host her, and that put our big toe into the water. Then she arrived on the plane, and we were then ankle deep into her life. Then came the 5 weeks of living with her in our home, and that put us at about neck-level into her life. She began to share life stories that shook me to the core. Sometimes I'd hold her until she fell asleep, oftentimes listening to her tell me how this was the first time she had felt loved by a mom. And the deeper I got involved in her life, the more I entered her pain. It was uncomfortable at times, hurtful at times and just plain messy almost all the time. When we put her on that plane back to her country, all of a sudden it was no longer just a statistical fact that human trafficking was rampant in that area of the world. NOW, that statistic had a name and a personality and pink Hello Kitty pj's and a stuffed dog she slept with every night. NOW that orphan was "one of mine." I had held her and bought her toothpaste and made her favorite mashed potatoes 870 times in 5 weeks.
Behind every statistic is a person with a real, breathing body and a real, hurting heart. We honestly don't want to actually think about this, because it makes us uncomfortable. Why? Because then we have to face the fact that we can easily sing about love on Sunday mornings but then on Monday hear that 27 million people are in modern-day slavery in the world today, and we can go eat lunch and forget we ever heard such a thing. But if that were OUR child who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery, we'd be beating down doors trying to get people involved to help us. We'd pull out all stops, even going as far as flying to the end of the globe to help our child.
See, this double life bothers me. A lot. And I'm speaking to myself here. I suffer from indifference, and it has to be stripped from me...circumcising my very heart in the process.
I think about that verse in Hebrews that says we must remember those in prison as if we were there ourselves, and we must remember those being mistreated as if we felt the pain in our own body. But we do the opposite, don't we? We try hard not to think about those who are tied to beds in India (or Atlanta...yes, human trafficking exists in all 50 states of the United States). We try hard not to think about that orphan with the brain tumor. We keep our minds from wondering what life would be like for that child in foster care who has lived in 12 different homes in the past 5 years. Why is it so easy to talk about loving others but then so difficult to enter into focused prayer and fasting for someone in spiritual chains or physical chains? Because we don't want to get messy. Entering someone's life is no doubt going to be messy. And we gravitate toward comfort, don't we?
God help us to not be indifferent, when it may very well be that we...yes, little unimportant me and you with all our issues and weaknesses...it may be that WE are the ones who are here for such a time as this to live our lives for something bigger than ourselves. It may be that we hold the key that unlocks someone's prison door. If we only enter that messy life. After all, aren't we really ALL messes? Messy, doubting, imperfect people who have been scooped up in His arms and loved like treasures. Is it not only right that we then do that for others?
