Set in Families
Romans 8:15 · Matthew 6:32 (NIV)
In Crossville, Tennessee, a small group of volunteers found a place for cats who needed a different kind of home.
HART Rescue, short for Helping Animals Rescue Team, works with feral and semi-feral cats. Jennifer Cabral, who founded the group in 2015 with Deb Mathews, says these cats "are considered not adoptable to domestic homes." They are not kittens. Most are teenagers or adults.
So HART looks for a different kind of place. The group's veterinarian spays or neuters each cat and gives it its shots. Volunteers photograph the cats, note their personalities, and post them online. Then they match each cat with a farm that wants one. So far, HART has placed 634 cats with local farmers.
Not every cat finds a farm right away. Cats without an immediate match go back to the shelter until one opens up. The volunteers try to fit each farm with the kind of cat it can welcome, from fully feral to simply shy.
According to Cabral, the program "has ended euthanasia for feral and semi-feral cats at our local shelter entirely." That shelter serves Cumberland County. "Barn life is a good life," she said, "and better than euthanasia."
Good Good Good, a website that reports hopeful news, told the story on October 8, and today’s 1440 news digest shared it.
The volunteers took each cat as it was and found it a place where it could live.
Psalm 68 is one of Israel's great songs of praise. Much of it celebrates GOD as a mighty King. Then, in the middle of all that power, the song stops for the people most easily overlooked. "A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families, he leads out the prisoners with singing" (Psalm 68:5-6).
The GOD of all that strength is a father to the child with no father and a defender to the widow with no one to speak for her. HE sets the lonely in families.
The same psalm remembers how GOD cared for HIS people in hard years: "you refreshed your weary inheritance... from your bounty, God, you provided for the poor" (Psalm 68:9-10). A few lines later, it adds, "Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens" (Psalm 68:19). GOD does the carrying, and HE does it every day.
The apostle Paul, who planted churches across the Roman world, wrote a letter to believers in Rome. He told them what GOD's Spirit had done for them. "The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, 'Abba, Father'" (Romans 8:15). Abba is an Aramaic word for father.
Adoption begins with a family deciding to make room. A few words later Paul adds, "The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children" (Romans 8:16). GOD HIMSELF tells HIS children who they are.
JESUS spoke about that same care from the Father in the Sermon on the Mount, recorded in Matthew 5 through 7. HE told the people listening not to worry about food and clothing, and then HE gave the reason. "For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them" (Matthew 6:32). Before anyone asks, the Father already knows. HIS attention comes first, ahead of any worry and ahead of any prayer.
A bishop named Irenaeus led the church in Lyon, in what is now France, around AD 180. In his work Against Heresies, he noticed something about the list of JESUS' ancestors in Luke's Gospel. It runs all the way back to Adam, the first man. Irenaeus counted the generations and said the list ends up "connecting the end with the beginning." He wrote that it shows JESUS "has summed up in Himself all nations dispersed from Adam downwards, and all languages and generations of men, together with Adam himself" (Against Heresies III.22.3).
Irenaeus sees the reach of CHRIST’s humanity extending to every nation and every language.
In Lessons From the Yurt, day six, Mission Eurasia describes a traditional place of honor opposite the entrance, where guests were received. That image leaves me thinking about how we welcome someone who arrives feeling like a stranger. GOD’s care for the lonely calls us to make room.
GOD makes room for the overlooked, and HE does it as a Father.
The Father who makes room for us also sustains us through every season of life. This Sunday’s Sabbath, The One Who Carries, continues that reflection. Read the preview and request the full Sabbath reflection and music →
It does leave me thinking about the people who made room for me before I had anything to offer.
I am not here to prove myself. I am here to make HIM visible.
🙏 To the one who feels left out of every family, GOD sets the lonely in families.
🙏 To the one who grew up without a father, GOD calls HIMSELF a father to the fatherless.
🙏 To the one worried about tomorrow's needs, your heavenly Father already knows.
🙏 To the one who feels like a stranger at the door, HE has a place for you.
Grace and Peace.