daily java

Daily Java:

My wife has this cat. It’s name is Prisca. We always name our animals Bible names. Not sure why, I guess it is just because we can.

And she loves her cat. It is not always obedient and lays down an awful lot of hair to suit me. She is also not very affectionate (the cat, not Ella) and will not sit on Ella’s lap enough to suit her.

As far as I go, she leaves me alone and I reciprocate by doing the same with her. But all in all, I try to be a good cat-father to Ella’s cat. Ella loves it and I love Ella so there we are. I buy it food and litter, I don’t beat it to death when it scratches me (which it does from time to time, not on purpose but she has rather long claws).

But Ella loves it. And so it walks around the house freely and doesn’t go in the dumpster when I am tired of it. She talks to it and gives it treats and generally makes over it more than it deserves.

It is of more than passing interest to me that the word cat isn’t in the Bible in any but the Contemporary English Version, one I do not really care for. That is why there is no scripture for this article today. But in general, that translation relies a lot on paraphrase and the word cat isn’t in the Hebrew or the Greek in the scriptures.

I suppose you could make something of that. And some do. But of course, some make something of a lot of things that are unimportant.

I thought it interesting that at the Precious Moments chapel in Joplin, MO, the guy who made all those Precious Moments figurines, the little ones with big eyes and all, drew a picture of heaven on the wall of the chapel. There are dogs running around everywhere. But until recently, there were no cats. A child was sad that cats were missing and the guy was a bit of a sucker for kids, so he drew one.

I don’t know. We have had cats a lot, but they always seemed amoral to me. Dogs have a conscience but not cats. They have a fear reflex but that is because they are not stupid. When a creature that is 24 times your size is coming at you mad, you would be truly stupid not to run like a scalded cat.

But God made them and they perform functions in his world. Ours, of course, performs no function. It is merely Ella’s pet, and it mostly just sits there.

Sometimes we are like that to God. We come to him and accept him and his grace but then we do nothing. We just sit there. We may come to church most of the time and maybe sing a little, eat the communion and drink the juice, shake a hand here and there, then go home and do nothing for the rest of the week.

When it really comes down to it, what good are we? We are like Prisca, just kind of there.

Do you really want to get to heaven and have God tell you that you were like a pet cat, basically worthless? Or do you want to live a life that is full of his grace and love and his power.

The choice is yours, of course.