In C.S. Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy, the boy Shasta is alone among the Tombs at night. He’s afraid and cold, but then out of the darkness appears a cat, a lone cat in the midst of a place of sorrow.
Lewis writes, “Shasta lay down beside it with his back against the cat and his face toward the Tombs, because if one is nervous there’s nothing like having your face toward the danger and having something warm and solid at your back.”
Later Shasta learns that the cat who provided him comfort that night was none other than the great lion, Aslan.
My own cat brings me a great deal of comfort. Sometimes when it’s cold and I’m lying on my side, he sneaks up behind me and curls up in the crook of my legs providing that warmth at my back.
Even though I know he’s no Aslan in disguise, I have little doubt that God has provided me and all of us with pets for the soul/sole purpose of reminding us of unconditional love.
When my cat sits on my lap and purrs this rumbling, throaty purr, I feel this peace, this inner peace and I relax and find myself smiling.
It has been a trying few weeks for me and sometimes I feel a lot like Shasta alone in the Tombs with night fast approaching.
But here and there are God things … always in the midst of the darkness.
Twice this week, I have walked back through the woods at church and stood on the recently built bridge that overlooks the creek bed. Even though that space in the woods is maybe fifty feet at most from civilization, there are enough trees to buffer the sound and block out the buildings that sit on the horizon. Out there by the bridge, it feels like a whole different world.
Out there, I watch the tall, swaying pines and smile at the shadows that dance across the leaf strewn ground. The sunlight plays in the palm fronds, here one second, gone the next, nature’s version of hide and seek.
And for a moment I know why people once believed in magic, why people once believed in fairies, because there is something mystical and completely beyond human understanding out there in the trees.
But what’s out there is not the stuff of fantasy and fairytales … it is something real and grand. It is God. It is God’s creation. It is a glimpse of what the world really is stripped bare of noise and clutter and hardship.
It is more beautiful than I could ever have imagined.
And it brings me peace.
It gives me comfort.
Matthew 11:28 reads, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
And whenever my life seems overburdened, I know that I can find God out there by the bridge or in the purring of my cat. He is everywhere and sometimes in places we tend to overlook.
But God is there and He will bring us peace.
