Sandy and I are harboring a serial killer in our home.  He’s a 21-pound mostly Maine Coon cat, named Oliver.  Despite the absence of front claws (not our doing – that’s how he was when we adopted him) he has dispatched mice and moles, and to my profound regret, a baby bunny.

I realize that rabbits are just as unwelcome to gardeners as are mice and moles to regular civilians, but they are not mere varmints to me.  A bunny, even when eating Sandy’s flowers, is still cute as… well, a bunny.

Ollie is too fat and slow to stand a chance of catching a mature bunny, but he is more than a match for them when they are still babies.  After his first kill, we learned to be on the lookout for bunny burrows.  When there are bunnies in the backyard, Ollie is not free to roam there.  And since bunnies breed like rabbits, this means that on several occasions throughout the summer, Ollie’s meanderings are closely circumscribed.  Occasionally, he must endure the indignity of being carried into the house when he refuses to forsake his bunny burrow stalking.

He complains about this. Loudly.  He doesn’t know why we spoil his hunting.

He is also mystified by our refusal to allow him to eat himself sick (literally – yuck).

He doesn’t know why we thwart his desires, but he does know that he can plop down at will and we will bend over and lavish belly rubs on him; that he is welcome, even during Zoom meetings, to jump up on my desk and get all the scritching a cat could want.  He knows, I think, in his own feline way, that we are eager at any time to enjoy his company and that we delight in showing our love for him.

We don’t always understand God’s ways or happily consent to the limits God puts on our freedom.  But this you can be sure of: God is active in your life to lead you to blessings and to divert you from harm and harming.  Mind you, sometimes this means that God pulls you away from some people and things that have a magnetic hold on you and whose loss you deeply feel.  This is a sign of God’s love, not its contradiction.

We are not pets.  We have agency.  We can choose to yield our will to God’s will, or not.

Paradoxically, it is only when we begin to yield to God’s will that we begin to feel a simultaneous resistance to God’s will.  We feel resistance from that part of us that is not yet fully given over to God, not yet fully transformed into the image and likeness of Christ. 

When we are pulled away from enchanting temptations, we complain.  Loudly.

Prayer:  Maybe I didn’t really mean it when I said I wanted you to change my life.  Maybe I want to be left alone.  Be very quiet; I’m hunting rabbits.