Parables of the Pastor’s Cats

The Cleft of the Rock

They disappeared in the night, a litter of six tiny, fluffy kittens. We didn’t find out until late morning, when Diane peeked into the house we had tended for them in the garage. No kittens. The mother had apparently moved them.

The kittens had outgrown the file drawer that we had provided just a week earlier. The sides of the drawer had kept them from wandering into the dangerous places in the garage. But now the kittens had grown, and we could see that they needed to explore their world.

But we missed them, and we had some doubts about how the little momma cat could find a place that was better than ours. We didn’t even know how she could move the kittens. So we set off to search.

Maybe we were more curious than anything. But we looked around a group of unused sheds, peering under the floor and through the cracks in the walls. When those proved to be empty, we trudged through the grove of trees closest to the garage.

We found them in a pile of concrete slabs that had been stacked up in the grove. In among the gaps between slabs of concrete, the kittens were climbing and running and tumbling over each other.

When we got close, the sound spooked them, and they disappeared into the deep recesses of the rock where we couldn’t see a trace of them in the darkness. It was a perfect hiding place for kittens, and a perfect place for them to exercise and grow.

And the little calico cat had apparently chosen it for her kittens long before that day. She spent hours there when she was expecting. In the end, it was an ideal choice.

And it was a hymn.

She had hidden her kittens in the cleft of the rock.

The song borrows an image from Isaiah of a rock that shadows a dry land. In the heat of the day, there is a retreat within the cool recesses of the rock. In the heat of battle, there is a place of safety in the rock.

Or take a glimpse at Moses’ life. God tucked Moses into a gap in the rock so Moses could get as close as possible to God’s glory. That’s what Moses wanted, to be close to God. That was his safety and his comfort. That was his cool place when life became overheated.

If you could ask the kittens to tell you the most important feature of their mountain of concrete, they would probably say that momma is there. The rocks are nice, but they go where momma goes.

They are like Moses, in a way. Gotta get close to the one who provides.