This past April was a rough month for pets in the Buxa house. In the span of five days, our cat disappeared and our yellow Lab died. After a few months of petless existence (if you don’t count the chickens), we recently brought home two barn kittens and a black Lab puppy.
All was good—for a few weeks. Then it happened again. Leo, our orange-and-white kitty, disappeared. The reality of owning mousers in the country was sinking in. I started hinting to the kids that maybe the hawk we saw dive-bombing gophers in our yard swooped down and got him. Or maybe it was a coyote or raccoon or fox or any of the predators that roam in the middle of nowhere, which is how the kids describe where we live.
They didn’t want to believe me. With good reason, it turns out.
Three days later, as my husband and I were driving home from separate events, we ended up on the interstate about four minutes apart. My cell phone rang. “Hey, there’s an orange-and-white cat on the side of the freeway. You don’t think it could be ours, do you?” he asked. (His years as a hunter and a Coast Guard search-and-rescue pilot obviously played a role in spotting an animal while driving in the dark at freeway speeds.)
I was behind him, so this was just enough time for me to pull over and check it out. Sure enough, there was our kitten, watching traffic fly by. He didn’t bolt into traffic (one of my concerns) but simply let me scoop him up and walk him back to the car.
A few minutes later when I got home, the kids came out to meet me, thinking they would have to carry in groceries. Instead they got reunited with their kitten.
After coming up with all the how-in-the-world scenarios, we finally settled on being pretty sure he had crawled up on our house painter’s van and ended up going for a ride. Still, though we believe we know how he got moved, no amount of coincidence could explain how he got from the van to the side of the freeway to a place where my husband would spot him to sitting and waiting for me—five miles from our house.
Since then we’ve used this to talk to the kids about how our God, who has made the universe so big that we can’t even fathom it, still knows when a sparrow falls to the ground. This same God—who has lots of actual real problems to tend to—knew where our cat was the whole time, and he delighted in giving us this little joy as a reminder of his big love.
Now it’s your turn. Although the world's news seems continually heavy, what things in your life simply cannot be chalked up to coincidence? What reminds you that God, even as he has absolutely shown you his big-picture love by giving you his Son, also wants to give you reminders of his attention to your detail? I think we all could use a little good news.
