Tammy On Tuesday – In A Box

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I love word pictures!  Now, I am already prepared today to receive ribbing because I’m going to use a simple illustration in my blog that involves one of my cats.  Here come the comments …”It’s the crazy cat lady!”  “Of course you need to incorporate your cats into the blog in some way because your obsessed with cats!”  It’s all in good fun.  I’m willing to face the ridicule for the purpose of illustration.

Yesterday morning, my kids finished up a box of cereal from Costco.  It was a big square box. You know the kind.  My youngest, Sophie, opened up both ends and created a little hiding place for our cat, Clive.  He LOVES to climb into boxes and hang out.

Well, she had put the box in my office and while I was working yesterday, I turned around to find him settled in to his new little hiding place. He was perfectly content…looked like he had no intentions of getting out all day.
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I thought to myself, “What is it with cats and boxes?”  So, I Googled it.  A popular pet care site online explains a cat’s fascination with boxes.  They said:

• Cats like the security of an enclosed space. It’s a potential hiding place.  A box resembles a cave and may make your cat feel secure knowing they are protected and, theoretically, cannot be attacked from behind.
• It’s instinctive.  Cats seem to instinctively prefer smaller, more confined spaces.
• Boxes are cozy. Try putting a soft blanket in the bottom of your cat’s favorite box. The sides help retain the cat’s body heat making a comfy nest.

What insights I gained from Googling why cats like boxes!   Surprisingly, I find we are very much alike!  I know that’s difficult to hear for some of you “non-cat lovers”

Consider this…

• Cats like having a place to hide and so do we.  I am speaking mainly of hiding from the potential adventure and risk required to step “out of the box” and follow God in His plan.

• Cat’s instinctively go to the box and so do we.  We prefer smaller, confined spaces – places we think we can control.  To step outside of the box of our plans and agenda, to some, seems ludicrous.  The problem is…we are living in a box.

• Cats find boxes cozy.  We also often stay in a box because it’s comfortable.  Let’s face it.  To step outside the box of our goals and ambitions and place them in God’s hand would take from us the presumed control and cause us to have to trust Him.

I was talking with a friend last evening who has faced quite a few serious health challenges in her young 20 years of life.  It would be easy to say her life should be about finding stability and safety.  Finding a way to cope with the illnesses she has.  Common sense should tell her to find a safe and cozy box to settle in.  It would be easy to make life all about finding comfort and reprieve from illness.  But in conversation with her, it’s clear that there’s is a fire and a passion for more.  She’s a remarkable and gifted musician.  I encouraged her with a familiar passage of scripture from God’s Word.

Isaiah 55:9
For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

I said to her, “Isn’t it so cool that God describes His way for you and I as ‘higher’.  He could’ve said, ‘My ways are different than your ways and my thoughts are different than your thoughts.’  And that would be true.  But that’s not all.  They are not just different.  They are HIGHER.  You go, God!!

We went on to discuss the beauty of what this means.  I said, “When we acknowledge that His ways are higher…we immediately begin to think of what might seem higher to us – what our minds can comprehend as higher.

He must mean… happier. safer. easier.

Even though we are thinking “higher” we are still often thinking within the context of the box we are sitting in…as high as our box can go.

I’m quite sure what God has in mind hasn’t crossed yours.

That’s been the case in my own life.
I left college with a degree in Psychology and a husband who landed a job as a Controller for a local company right out of the gate.  Both of us were securing jobs in prestigious fields of work. We would have 4 children.  All of them spaced preferably 2.5 years apart.  I had it all figured out.  I guess you could say I was decorating my box with the greatest of style.  But then God invited me outside of my box.  Well, actually it was more like He turned it over and I fell out.  That was years ago.  And there’s one thing I can say for sure His ways are HIGHER!

I would’ve never dreamed I’d be where I am today.  My husband is a pastor.  And, you guessed it, I’m a pastor’s wife.  But I’m also a mom of three great kids, a photographer, a graphic designer, a friend, a servant – all the things that make me tick!  God knew it all along!  He knew how to bring me in to a place of abundant living.  He knew.  He just knew.

And you know what? I couldn’t have found my way here by remaining in the box.  I had to trust Him and I’m so glad I did!

John 10:11,27 says, “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd gives his life for the sheep… My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.”

…they follow Me out of their box.

Where do you find yourself this morning?  Is God pressing in about letting go of your box?  You know what it is that holds you there.  Is today the day to step out of the box where God is prompting?

In a day or two, I’ll toss Clive’s box in the recycle bin.  Perhaps you need to do the same. PINIMAGE

Step out of the box.