Sometimes revelation creeps in on little cat feet.
     OK, so I'm badly misquoting a poem by Carl Sandberg. But our community cat, Rachel, insists on climbing onto my lap at odd moments throughout the day, and her reaction to stroking her back has given me a word of prophecy for the church at large.
     Purr.
     Even if you don't like animals, let alone cats, you've got to admit there is something otherworldly about the sound a cat makes when it is being petted. It's a rumbling from somewhere deep inside the animal, or possibly from some other dimension, that is the most perfect expression of contentment uttered by man or beast.
     That's not to say Rachel is wise. Most of the time, she's totally self-absorbed or aloof or stalking a grasshopper or bird she'll never catch. Sometimes she's fighting other cats over fluctuating feline territorial rights. Sometimes she resists being held at all. But when she's in my lap, of her own free will, she loses consciousness of everything else – no hunting expeditions distract her, no food or other agendas. She could care less about people coming or going.
     She's probably not thinking about anything, actually. Certainly not about what she's going to do later that afternoon. In those moments, her to-do lists are about as valuable as used kitty litter.
     Purring and stretching. Stretching and purring.
     Does an occasional voice inside her tiny cat brain say, "What if all cats spent their time this way? Nothing would ever get done. You'll certainly never amount to anything this way. Socks the White House cat has probably already worked out at the gym, sharpened her claws and finished several memoranda by this time of day."
     That would be absurd, of course. But absurd parallels between the natural and spiritual worlds are what made talking to Jesus so maddening.
     "Behold the fowls of the air," He said. "For they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?"
     The movie Prince of Egypt didn't touch on this, but Pharaoh's response to Moses' and the Children of Israel's request to go into the wilderness to sacrifice to God was, "Ye are idle; ye are idle!" That was just before he upped the work load and subtracted the straw.
     The problem is not that people are idle, it's that they are too busy with their own lives. Even if you are immobilized, depressed and are producing nothing, it's probably because you're obsessed with your problems – "busy" with being a victim or fantasizing about what you wish you had.
     But Rachel – lolling in the sun – speaks by being "in the moment."
     And she's saying, "Self-awareness is not conducive to purring."
     Even if a mortal enemy – let's say, a neighborhood dog – trots into the yard, Rachel is unperturbed, because she knows she's being held by her "master." (Cats only have "masters" in quotation marks).
     Martin Luther awoke one night to an apparition of the Devil at the foot of his bed. "Oh, it's only you," he said, and went back to sleep. Luther knew that he was "seated with Him in the heavenlies" and had nothing to worry about.
     Rachel and Luther are experts in spiritual location, knowing their sphere of being, not being "debtors to the flesh," or "minding earthly things."
     Our inheritance as believers is to purr. We are promised contentment and joy if we abandon ourselves into the arms of a loving God.
     Rachel, of course, has heard about the Laughing Revival, in which participants, seeking more and more "filling" from the Holy Spirit, begin to twitch, bark like dogs and roar like lions, sometimes for hours at a time. That sounds like too much work for Rachel.
     She and I would rather purr.