Wikimedia Creative Commons
I’m working hard to try to finish my new book. It’s been a struggle on some of the writing days. It’s not that I haven’t had time for writing what with the shelter in place advisories for the last two months. But some stories take a little more tugging and pulling to get them out of my imagination. So to save a little creative energy, I dipped back into my archives for a story for you all tonight. I know many of you are cat lovers or you like pets of some kind. My sweet dog, Marley, is snoozing behind my chair right now while Frankie is outside just in case the coyotes start making noise. If that happens, Frankie will do his job and warn the whole neighborhood. Thank goodness I don’t think any of the neighbors are close enough to be too bothered by his ferocious barking. At least so far nobody’s complained. And a dog has to protect his people.
All that to say I dug around in my blog archives way back to 2008 and found this story that I shared then in hopes of bringing some smiles. Right now, we can use some smiles. This story came with the bulletin covers I use for our church. They send along a leaflet full of inspirational bits and some stories to make you smile too. This story was too long to fit in thechurch bulletin, but I thought it was fun. So here it is with a few edits. You know writers. They have to edit everything.
An Answered Prayer
Br. Jim’s kitten climbed a tree in his backyard and wouldn’t come down. The tree wasn’t sturdy enough for Br. Jim to climb it to rescue the kitten or even to prop a ladder against it to climb up. He didn’t want to bother the fire department. He wasn’t even sure they really came out to rescue kittens anymore. Besides, he prided himself on figuring things out on his own. The first thing he figured out was that kitten wasn’t coming down on her own. So he pitched a rope up into the tree and looped it around some of the branches. Then he hooked the other end of the rope to his car bumper. He figured he could carefully bend the little tree over until he could reach up and rescue the kitten.
Things started out fairly well. He eased the car forward. The tree bent over. But the kitten, clinging tighter than ever to the branch he was wrapped around, still was a bit too high. So Br. Jim pulled the car up a bit farther. Then disaster struck! The rope broke. The tree went “boing!” and the poor little kitten went sailing through the air out of sight.
Needless to say, Br. Jim felt awful. He searched all through the neighborhood, but nobody had seen a stray kitten. Finally he said a prayer, “Lord, I just commit the kitten to your keeping,” and gave up to go on about his business.
A few days later he was in the grocery store and met one of his church members. He was amazed to see cat food in her shopping cart. This woman had always been very vocal in her dislike of cats. So he asked her why in the world she was buying cat food since she hated cats so much.
“Br. Jim, you see it’s like this,” she explained. “My little girl has been begging and begging me for a cat and I kept saying no. Finally I told her if the Lord gives you a cat, I’ll let you keep it.” The woman’s face changed, got a look of awe, as she went on. “Well, my little girl went out in the yard, got down on her knees and started praying for the Lord to send her a kitten.” The woman slowly shook her head. “Preacher, you are never going to believe this, but I saw it with my own eyes. A kitten came flying out of the blue sky, with its paws outspread, and landed right in front of my little girl.”
Never under estimate the Power of God and His unique sense of humor. Proverbs says a merry heart worketh good like a medicine. I hope the story made you smile, but we can be pretty sure that poor little kitten used up one of its ten lives on that flight through the air.
Do you enjoy hearing stories that make you smile?