Dream Word – PREPARE
Jonah 4:6 And the Lord God prepared a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be shade for his head to deliver him from his misery. So Jonah was very grateful for the plant. NKJV
As is my usual routine, I got up early this morning, acquiesced to the instant ablutions of a man in his later years, clicked on the kitchen light, and placed some heavily caffeinated rich dark Columbian in the percolator in preparation for some later laxitivity, while then sitting down to write tonight’s 'NightWhisper.'
The light from the kitchen shone in the surrounding darkness of this Kentucky hillside and drew ‘the boys’ from afar. ‘The boys’ as we call them are ‘Itsy and Bitsy’ two little gifts from God, found meowing on the side of the road by my wife on her birthday, which was some 18 months previous to this. Two dumped and orphaned little ginger Tom Cats. Two twitching-faced Davy Crocket hats, two foul-wind machines, two sources of pest control, two mouse deliverers, two purring, warm and cozy, sources of comfort and sources of caressing. Two little creatures curled at the bottom of the bed, two sets of bright eyes in the long night, two little sources of God’s comfort that turn up each morning, greet you with a smile, bite your feet to let you know you live today, and then wrap their warm and fuzzy little tails around your cold morning calves, to also let you know that today, you are loved once more! Yes, the boys, those two little ginger ‘Tom’s,’ those two little gifts from God, came banging at my early morning door, most each and every day.
It is interesting how attached you get to little things. In our text for tonight, for that peculiar and pugnacious prophet called Jonah, it was a plant, and a simple day plant at that. For me and for my wife, it was our cats, our furry substitutes for our much older but very missed children and two warm little distractions from the cold loneliness that such a missing often generates. A few days after writing this NightWhisper, I returned to our homeland, and left those two little creatures behind. As the little ginger duet, crouching side by side, eating in unison from their full blue bowls, I think how much I will miss this furry morning routine. Then I thought to myself, “Man! If we ever have to leave them for good, that’s gonna be a hard one, especially for my wife.”
It’s amazing how misery can so easily leap upon a Celt. That last thought of mine allowed the cat of melancholia to come and curl up in my lap, look me in my eye and remind me that in this life, everything and everyone shall be said goodbye to. “The longer you live,” it menacingly purred, “Then the more you shall say goodbye. Until at last, they shall say goodbye to you.” It then relaxed and in the relaxing, it broke some very smelly and unwanted wind. Finally, it said, “One day soon, you are going to die.” I said, “Thanks for the reminder.”
By now the coffee was beginning to take effect so I quickly grabbed that mangy little visitor by its scabby little neck and threw it out the window! It had said nothing new. No, I am aware of all that. I am a Pilgrim for goodness sake! En-route to God's Holy City, to my Hometown nestled in the mountains of my Homeland, and in being a Pilgrim right now, I am therefore already preparing my goodbyes well in advance, but more than that, oh mangy and smelly melancholic little kitten, I am preparing my “Hello’s” and I am practicing my “How do you do's!”
How about you tonight? What hello's are you looking forward to after your final goodbye is said?
It was Alfred Lord Tennyson that wrote, ‘The Crossing of the Bar.’ It is a majestic piece and the last two lines read..
“I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
