This morning, I can hear our new kitten crying pitifully as he sits in his litter box in his cage. Gabriel, our kitten, has been drinking the water and eating the food we have given him, but he longs for his mother. We long to comfort Gabriel, to nestle him in our arms, but he still fears us. Were we to try to cuddle him right now, one of us might wind up in the Emergency Room with stitches!
One of the many names of Jesus is “Immanuel” or “Emmanuel,” meaning “God with us.” But why should God order that his Son be called by such a name? God wants all people to know that He is not sitting someplace far away but that He is as close as their heartbeats. But there’s a problem: Just as we struggle to communicate with little Gabriel the kitten, God keeps sending His Word by various means to communicate with people, many of whom aren’t listening or are deafened by the noise of the world around them.
All we want to do is to comfort Gabriel, to make him feel secure, and to demonstrate the depth of our love for him; yet, we struggle to reassure him. If one of us were able to speak “cat” or even to become a cat with the knowledge we have, it would be much easier to comfort Gabriel. We celebrate Christmas because at Christmas, God accomplished what we cannot: He sent Jesus to be born as a baby to a poor family from an obscure village so that He could demonstrate His love and concern through Jesus. Jesus was also born so that he could love, minister, and die as a blood sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, conquering death, hell, and the grave.
Each time little Gabriel mews pitifully, our hearts break, and we beg God again to help us find some way to comfort him. Now if God is a loving Father, with a great heart of love deeper than anything we can possibly imagine, won’t He have compassion on His suffering children just as we have compassion for our kitten? When we cry, God hears us, even though help doesn’t always come in the form we desire. Again, Isaiah 55:9 reminds us that God’s ways are higher than ours.
On the night before Jesus was crucified, he was struggling to impart everything he possibly could to his disciples while he was still with them. John recorded those conversations. In John 14:7-11, Jesus was trying to reassure his friends.
7 “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.”
8 Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.”
9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works. 11 Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves.”
If Jesus had been a cat speaking to other cats, he would have told them that he was sent by the Creator of all cats to demonstrate that Creator’s love.
Do we think we occupy the place of God with our kitten? Far from it! We are flawed human beings whose race mostly lost the ability to communicate with the animals when sin entered the world. Throughout the world, there are those individuals blessed in their abilities to communicate with animals. But we firmly believe that God can comfort our kitten and we are begging Him to do so. We are begging for Immanuel to comfort little Gabriel, to be “God with Gabriel.”
Please notice something: we should always worship the Creator, not the creature. Someone grieving the loss of their sixteen-year-old cat mentioned on Facebook that they intended to create an altar to the cat. As a shrine to remember the cat, that might be all right; however, to worship a dead cat would be quite wrong, no matter how precious the memories might be.
So once more, we find ourselves resembling feral cats. We want to trust God, but we have bitter memories, and we aren’t really sure if this “Immanuel” business, this “God with us” stuff is real or not. But the good thing about Jesus is that his followers recorded Jesus’ teachings in four different Gospels, each with its own approach, giving us the information we need about Jesus and his Heavenly Father.
If you are new to the Bible, begin by reading the Gospel of John in a format that speaks to you. Personally, I like the New King James version because it preserves the language of the King James without archaic terms. But other versions such as The Message or The Living Bible are equally good. The important thing is to learn about Jesus, Immanuel, God with us. Let’s pray.
PRAYER: Father God, thank You for loving us and caring for us. Lord, we confess that we are all feral cats. We have been hurt and we don’t trust anybody. Lord, please speak to the hearts of all those reading these words, make Yourself so real to them that they KNOW You are Immanuel, God with them. In the mighty and precious Name of King Jesus. Amen.
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