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Cats in the Rain

by Jerry Ousley  
7/25/2009 / Christian Living

The alarm went off at 3:00 AM. As is my norm, I re-set it to 3:30 AM I just had to get a few more minutes sleep. Barely drifting back into slumber land, not quite there but so close I could smell the daisies, I was pulled back by the sound of the fan shutting off. I hadn't pushed the button . . . what happened? After becoming as alert as one can at 3:09 AM I realized that the electricity was no longer working. Stumbling across the floor with my eyes only partially opened, my first reaction was to see if it was just our house or the whole neighborhood. It was the entire neighborhood.

Debbie keeps a flashlight by the bed so I stumbled back into the bedroom to where I knew it was supposed to be and now there was light. I thought, "Well, it probably won't stay off for long," so I got ready for the day by flashlight. Do you know how tedious it is to shave by flashlight?

After going through my process to face the day the electric still wasn't on; that meant no coffee. I couldn't go to my office to get any work done on the computer, which is why I have the habit Monday through Friday of getting up so early before work. There was only one thing to do sit and wait. I had fed our cats and decided it would be cooler to sit outside, so that's what I did. It was raining and raining hard. But it was a straight-down rain so I could sit on our porch without it blowing in on me. Our cats had the same idea so I sat on the dark porch watching what little activity there was going on in the neighborhood as workers from the electric company furiously did their job in that pouring down rain on the next street over.

Now cats don't normally like getting wet. We've tried to bath our cats and let me summarize that scenario by saying that Deb and I usually get as wet as the cats do in the process. But those silly cats decided to take a stroll in the rain. I watched almost mad at them because they act the way they do when getting a bath, but how calm they were about being out in the rain. Shaggy, our oldest cat, had decided to return to the dry porch as our younger cat continued her excursion in the downpour.

Suddenly Shaggy jumped into attack position and I knew he had seen something in the dark that human eyes couldn't detect. For him to move like that meant that something exciting was going on because at his age he just doesn't get that excited over much. Then I saw movement. Our younger cat was chasing something in the rain and Shaggy was about to get in on the action. Whatever it was they were chasing ran right onto the porch and then back down the sidewalk with both cats in hot pursuit. It was sort of humped over as it ran and was about the size of my fist so I figured it to be either a field rat or a mole. Anyway, those cats ignored the pouring down rain as did the whatever it was, as it fled for its life with those cats hot on its heels.

They didn't catch it. Somehow it got into the neighbor's yard and disappeared. Both cats hunted for a while before returning to the dry porch. The point I saw in all of this however was this that even though those cats both hated being wet, when it came to something they really wanted to do, it didn't matter. I saw right then and there that if they wanted something badly enough they'd do it get wet or not.

As I thought about this situation in the darkness of the early morning I realized that people are exactly like that as well. We can make all sorts of excuses as to why we can't come to God. There's the "I'm not good enough" excuse; then there is "I don't have the proper clothes to attend church" excuse. How about the "God understands my heart and He knows how I really feel" excuse. It's true that God knows our hearts. He sees every thought and intent. The thing is that I've seen people who really couldn't afford to do whatever it was they wanted to do, but they found a way. So doesn't it stand to reason that if we wanted to come to God badly enough, we'd find a way? Like cats in the rain, we will make allowances when it's really what we want to do. So, what do you want to do?

Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.? Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge.

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