A Sound In The Night

Two cats were fighting in the woods.
I heard them.
The sound frightened me.
It sounded like a baby crying.

When a baby cries, it means that attention must be paid.
However, babies do not cry alone in the woods in the middle of the night.
I sat up and listened.
I wanted to see if I could discern where, in the dark woods, the cats were fighting.

Noises pay tricks on you in the dark.
Everything seems to be off kilter when the light is not shining on it.
What is up is really down.
What is over there is really over here.

I wondered what the cats were fighting about.
I wondered if one cat dominated the fight so that the other one scurried away.
I wondered where the cats were supposed to be at that late hour.
Feral cats are not something we have to deal with around here.

Either I fell back to sleep or the fighting stopped.
All was quiet.
Too quiet.
I wondered if the cat who scurried off did not scurry off, but was injured.

There was no way of knowing.
There was nothing I could do to fix it.
The world is fallen.
Cats fight viciously in the night, sounding eerily similar to a baby crying.

I heard them in the store.
Everyone did.
They were screaming at the top of their lungs.
Nothing distracted them; nothing calmed them.

Their screams echoed from every corner.
I had no idea from which direction they were coming.
After hearing the two cats fighting the night before, this was uncomfortably similar.
At the end of the aisle I saw them.

A brother and a sister were in one of those large shopping carts.
The kind of cart where an older child can sit in a bench seat.
A tiny woman was pushing this cumbersome cart.
That was difficult in and of itself, but with two screaming children, it was impossible.

I could not hear what she was doing to try to handle the situation.
Whatever she said was drowned out by their screams.
She continued to shop.
All eyes were on the children, and by extension, the mother as well.

It is a fallen world.
Cats fight in the woods in the middle of the night.
Children scream in large cumbersome shopping carts.
It is the way of things; how I long for it to be different.

I long for the day when sin is no more.
I long for the day when everything broken will be made new.
I long for the day when we say what we mean, with no agenda or ulterior motive.
I long for the day when there is not a hint of ego, just humble, quiet strength.

Bees sting.
Dogs bite.
Storms wreak havoc.
People get sick and leave us far too soon.

If we think this world is all there is, we are to be pitied.
This world is temporary.
We have a Heavenly city to look forward to with great anticipation.
We often walk with two left feet, it seems, since we were made for Somewhere else.

As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it  and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.” (Luke 19:41-44)

I cannot imagine being Jesus.
I cannot imagine knowing everything He knew.
I cannot imagine washing the feet of the Twelve, knowing the one who would betray Him.
I cannot imagine seeing the beloved city of Jerusalem, knowing that it would be destroyed.

Jesus wept over Jerusalem.
The word for wept, that Luke uses in his Gospel, is klaio.
Klaio means, to wail.
Jesus did not shed merely a single tear, rather Jesus wailed over the things that would happen.

I cannot imagine being Jesus.
Yet knowing that Jesus wailed over sin and destruction, comforts me somehow.
Jesus knows that cats will fight and children will scream.
Jesus knows the world He created by His Father’s side is fallen.

One day, Jesus will make all things new.
One day, sin will be no more.
One day, death will be no more.
One day…

Maranatha.
Come Lord Jesus.