‘His arm encircles me and mine and all’

One night I was awoken with cats fighting.  I couldn’t see anything outside and went down to the kitchen, where a neighbour’s cat had managed to get through the microchipped cat flap and had been fighting with Tiggy, fur was everywhere.  I managed to get rid of the neighbouring cat and comforted ours.  He seemed ok and slept for several hours but when we let him outside he ran away.

There are times when social media has its place.  I posted him missing on a neighbourhood website and was grateful for the feedback and concern from neighbours, including from someone posting that they had seen him in their garden which was several roads away, which meant he had crossed a busy road.

Along with so many others I have been praying for the situation in Ukraine, and while praying for Tiggy’s safety I realised there was a parallel.  It appeared that an aggressor, cat/Putin, had invaded our territory, our home/Ukraine, there was fighting, causing upset and displacement, our cat/Ukrainian residents. 

I started by knowing that the cat was in God’s all-encompassing care, and that he had a home where he was loved.    While searching up our road I could see this neighbour’s cat, the perpetrator, sitting in his window and I realised that I had to include him as well in this all-encompassing love.  ‘His arm encircles me and mine and all’ as Mrs Eddy writes in her Mother’s Evening Prayer.  She continues, ‘Wait, and love more for every hate, and fear No ill’.

That includes all people as well as cats.

Almost 24 hours later Tiggy reappeared and was no worse for wear.  Interestingly, he has been less shy and nervous and is now happy to be stroked and even tolerates be picked up and cuddled!

There have been some wonderful helpful citations in the Lesson sermon with accounts of protection, safety and courage, but I found this one this week particularly helpful, for those in Ukraine and those here at home: ‘For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord’.