And God Also Made A Cat: 90 Devotions for Cat People

By Victoria Rico Costina

Aug 27, 2019

Helping Lavender

 

…by God’s will I may come to you with joy

and be refreshed in your company.

Romans 15:32

 

A caretaker woman used to live some three houses away from ours here at Leonila Hill. We knew she kept cats, but for some reason she abandoned these, leaving these cats—a mother cat named Lavender and her three kittens—to forage for themselves.

For nearly two years, I’d go up the road each day to feed this family of cats, plus a feral black and white, very handsome tom I named Philodendron. A derelict jeepney used to be parked on that road and that was where the cats took shelter during the night and when it rained. For many months, I fed them there each day. After some men did repairs on the jeep so that it ran again, they took the jeep away, so I decided to take the family of cats home.

I decided to take the family of cats home. That time, a strong typhoon had blown in so I went out in the rain to look for the cats. They cowered among the bushes, mewling in the cold and rain. I don’t recall how I hauled them all in, but it was a successful retrieval. About Philodendron, he had disappeared, and I hoped he had simply found new food sources.

Many people have done what I did for Lavender and her family: taking people—and stray cats—in, out of the cold. This is God at work in our world.

Chapter 16 of Paul’s letter to the Romans is an example. Paul is profuse with thanksgiving for friends, fellow workers, and their relatives who had helped him. He greets Rufus, “chosen in the Lord, and his mother,” whom Paul says had been a mother to him, too (v. 13).

Women worked untiringly in the ministry: “Greet Tryphena and Tryphosa, those women who work hard in the Lord. Greet my dear friend Persis, another woman who has worked very hard in the Lord” (v. 12). Paul also had relatives, Andronicus and Junias, who stayed with him in prison (v. 7). Paul calls their work “outstanding among the apostles,” and they had become Christians even before he did.

The Bible shows how church isn’t just about a building, or sitting in the pews on Sundays.

God tells us to “…do good to all people, especially to…believers” (Gal. 6:10). We have received such concern from our fellow Christians: presence and kindness, when we most needed these. How, by their love, they complete God’s love in us (1 Jn. 4:12).

 

Thank You, Father, for all those who have helped me in every single way. Make me like them, a blessing to others. Amen.