The Kitten on the Front Step
The kitten on the front step appeared one rainy night with no tags, no name, and no home. Our neighborhood is quite small. Houses line the main streets like birds in a perfect line stretched out on a fence post. My friend is my neighbor, my neighbor my friend. Just down the block, I can see the top of the magnolia tree that graces the home of the 82-year-old pastor who baptized me when I was a girl. Across the way, my husband’s best friend’s mother; and down the holler, my aunt, first-grade teacher and the old house with the big attic where my great aunt Louise used to paint in the '40s.
I know everyone and everyone knows me. Yet, no one knew where the little kitten on the front step came from.
When we found him, his tail shivered from behind our son’s favorite red scooter. He looked hungry and boney. I’d seen him pass our house a few times but he was always too afraid to come closer than the bushes where the butterflies gather in the summer and the painted leaves fall down into the holler in autumn. I imagine he’d wandered house to house looking for food. Yet, he was so small no one ever noticed. He’d easily be hidden beneath a few sprigs of grass or a brick-lined border of a flower-bedded mailbox.
Tonight, as our children fed him and stroked his ears, he covered them in gratitude running his tiny little body against their feet. “Oh thank you!” he seemed to say. “Oh thank you! You saved me!” Inside a deep cardboard box, we stuffed in an old down jacket that Emmy had, a few layers of jogging pants, and draped a flannel blanket across the top. He crawled inside instantly. When I poured warm milk into one of Brock’s cereal bowls, he lapped it up gratefully before snuggling back into the box.
As I lay down in bed tonight, the rest of the world sleeping — including one little, lost kitten who found what he was looking for, God reminds me of the verse,
“Keep asking. Keep seeking. Keep knocking. Pray without ceasing.” (Paraphrasing mine)
House to house to house, we go about searching for what we need. When we are turned away or when we find no room in the inn, we lose heart. But if we are persistent, we will find that thing we so desire. It could be basic needs met, or companionship, the simple smile of a stranger, or the strange coincidence that lets you know that God hasn’t forgotten where you are.
As the birth of our Savior rolls around, may your hearts be filled with a spirit made anew. May you carry the mentality of the kitten on the front porch — asking, seeking, knocking — until your miracle answers. And if you don’t know this wonderful Savior, may you listen closely for the door of your own heart. For Jesus said,
“Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” (KJV)
Never give up. Never stop knocking. If you do, you’ll never know that the next door would be the one that opened giving you everything you needed, right when you needed it most.
Copyright © Brooke Keith, used with permission.
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