Komstad Evangelical Covenant
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Parables
of the Pastor’s Cats The Cat Who Would Be
King He spent his time beating up on the other cats, a practice that we strenuously discouraged, without any success. It was all part of the process of becoming king, and he took it seriously.  Who thought the littles kittens would be a threat to his reign. They were little more than wriggling furballs at first, and they drove him crazy. He would peer into the box and hiss at the little shadows inside. When the kittens grew old enough to venture out, the tomcat lurked just out of range and made all sorts of threatening sounds. And when he found kittens at the food dish, when they were old enough to toddle up to the bowl, he would haul off and swat them with a paw, knocking them off their feet. I can't explain why this is normal tomcat behavior. It seems a little silly. But the Bible tells a story with the same character, a silly tyrant who lashes out in fear of the smallest child. You can find it in the midst of the account of the first Christmas. The mysterious magi encounter an insecure king who is threatened by the mere rumor of a baby born in Bethlehem. So he hisses and bares his claws, and in the end his rage consumes a generation of children. What an awful anger. What hurtful pride. But it's no accident that the birth of Jesus takes place against the backdrop of such cruelty. That's the reason he came. The world is a broken place. It needed a savior. It still does. So Herod found a particular place in the Christmas story. Herod is the king who cannot hold onto his own kingdom. And Jesus is the child who rules wherever ordinary souls will recieve him as king. (You can read the story of Herod, the despicable king, in Matthew 2:1-18.)
Open my eyes so that I might see great and
wonderful things in your word.
Psalm 119:18 |
Beresford,
South Dakota
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