How does feeding your pet teach you about God? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
Have I told you about my cat lately? If you read my blog regularly or see me on Facebook, you know that I adore my cat, Shiro, pictured above. One of my great joys in coming home to my apartment at the end of a day of school or work is getting to see Shiro.
I try to call my folks once a day on my Echo and sometimes as I sit on my loveseat, Shiro jumps up on the arm of the loveseat and my folks get to see both of their boys. When he does this, he’s usually nuzzling me to no end giving me constant kitty kisses, as I call them. This can even be after his food machine has already gone off.
Nowadays also, when I get into bed, I do some Kindle reading, but usually Shiro finds his way right up next to me and lies down right next to me. When it’s time to go to bed, he jumps down. Still, the way the boy seems to follow me everywhere is quite adorable.
As I indicated earlier, Shiro has a food machine. It goes off at 8 AM and 8 PM so I don’t have to be around to feed him, but I do have to refill it every other day. There are plenty of times that Shiro is loving to me, but there are also times that it’s right before his food goes off and I know what he’s wanting. After all, as soon as that machine goes off, it’s off to the races.
Psalm 104:27 tells us that the animals look to God for their food. That idea of dependence is something incredible to think about. If you have an indoor pet, you know this is true. An outdoor pet could possibly go out and hunt everything they eat, but in some communities even this could be a challenge.
For Shiro, he is definitely dependent on me. If I did not feed him, he would starve. I provide his food, his water, and his litter box, and on top of that I am the one person he trusts to give him attention. After all, I lived with my parents for nearly a couple of years and their chance of petting him was a hit and a miss. Sometimes he did, but many times he would still run from them.
Psalm 104:27 says that all the animals look to God for food. These are the animals that can even hunt and don’t rely on humans at all. God is responsible for the environment they live in in which they find food. I do realize that there are questions about animals eating other animals, but that is for another post.
What can we learn? The animals are meant to teach us something about ourselves. Every time I feed Shiro and see him coming to me expectantly wondering when he gets to eat, I can think of how I approach God the same way. My own meals, even though I go buy them at a store normally, come from him as well. Do I give thanks accordingly or am I living with an idea of self-sufficiency?
Technically, I’m not that. No one is. Take the richest CEO you can out there. His money comes from somewhere still. For me, I have a part-time job at the seminary and I have an active Patreon for those who want to support me and this ministry. I’m thankful for all of them. I enjoy my job and new supporters are always a blessing and encouragement and motivate me to work harder here and give me more hope.
By the way, thankfulness is serious business. Romans 1 tells us one of the problems with sinful humanity is that they did not acknowledge God nor give thanks to Him. If we do not give thanks for small blessings anyway, why should we expect God to give us more?
Right now, I’m sure Shiro is at home and probably sleeping somewhere. He’ll be fine to see me when I get home, but will still sleep some more. Later in the day, he’ll be happy to get his food and be happy as well to have me pet him some. Will I show thankfulness to the one who provides for me as well?
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
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