He was lost but now He's found!

No I am not talking about some returnee to the Lord. I am talking about my cat Oscar. Last Thursday night he didn't come home. I tried to call him in during the evening as I hadn't seen him for a while but he never came home. He always comes home at night so I started to get very worried but eventually had to go to bed. I didn't sleep at all during the night and kept getting up to see if he had come home.

I eventually got up at 6:30 am and threw clothes on to go and look for him. I scoured the woods behind the house once light arrived and still could not find any trace of him. I then began to knock on neighbours doors to ask people to look in sheds and garages etc... in case he had got stuck somewhere. I put together a little note to post through letter boxes if no one answered the doors.

Just as I had finished the last knock/post, around 9:30 am, my neighbour returned from taking her child to school and asked if I had found him. She then asked if I had looked in the empty house in the street as the lady who lived there had a cat flap. I suddenly remembered the house used to have a magnetic cat flap as the cat had a collar with a magnet on it. I recently installed one in our house as we kept getting an unwanted guest in the house so Oscar had a magnet on his collar. Sure enough when I looked through the window of the empty house there he was staring at me from the stair case. The cat flap had been left on in only so he could get in but not out again.

We went round the back and and I pushed the latch on the flap open and out he came. I have never been so relieved. He seemed none the worse for his nights incarceration if not a little hungry. He has been very affectionate since as well.

My reaction in this crisis was quite startling and a bit of an eye opener to how far I still have to go in my Christian Walk. I got so angry with God when I though I wouldn't see my cat again and that he had taken him away from me as some sort of punishment. I was at the same time begging Him to let me find him. I was threatening God with cries of 'I'll never step in church again etc... if he's dead!'.

Looking back God was teaching me something of where I am at and what I need to look at in my walk with Him. I still react very childishly to certain provocation and don't have as mature a response as I should for my 17 years as a Christian. Time to do some digging to look for that inner child who has not been allowed to grow up.

'When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. when I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.' - 1 Corinth 13:11

Hmmm, God please help me on that one and thanks for giving Oscar back to me!