When your cat teaches you a lesson about life...

9/18/2015

...I have never been one for bugs. I don't' like camping, I wear rain boots to walk through our yard, and ants in the house send me into a full-blown panic attack. Through the years, God has expressed his sense of humor on me, allowing me to experience lice on my children THREE times! This week, though, it's our 2nd round of fleas on our cats that has me thinking. Lice and ants and fleas---they are gross, they are a nuisance and an inconvenience, and they have a very negative stigma attached to them. But I'm not going to stop hugging and loving on our girls when they have lice crawling on their heads. I'm not going to stop living in my house when the spring brings an onslaught of ants in our bathroom. And I am most definitely not going to allow fleas to keep me from cuddling our 3 day old kittens!


When I'm around people that are different from me---whether it be physically, economically, or in their values and beliefs---do I allow those things to keep me from loving on them? Do I allow their metaphorically speaking "lice and fleas" to keep me from moving closer and pressing into that relationship? Regrettably, my answer is yes. Sometimes I allow things that may be a nuisance, or inconvenient, or just plain gross! to be my excuse. It's like I allow those things to be a self-righteous repellant, not allowing them near. I might as well wear a sign that says, "I'm too good to engage in conversation with you because you don't dress like me.....I'm too clean to hug you even though you desperately need a hug....My beliefs are different, and therefore you don't deserve my attention...."

​I may never say that, but OHMYWORD! the audacity that I would even think it! Philippians 2:3 says,"Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility (YIKES!), consider others more significant than yourself." People will always have different views than me on life, but that doesn't mean they are less valuable or less important. They were, like ALL OF US, made in God's image, and they deserve the same love and attention that someone who is well-groomed and hard working receives.

If I neglect my girls when they have lice, they will feel like outcasts and will be "those kids everybody talks about." If I refuse to love on our kittens and remove the fleas from them, it could literally kill them. Who could use your love and attention, even though it may be messy and dirty? Do you let negative stigmas keep you at a distance, afraid of what others may think of your association? Who have you refused to rub up against because they are different? Be like Jesus. Take a risk. Get dirty.

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