His Eye Is on the Sparrow and Stray Cats and Me

As I have been studying the Bible more deeply, I have been increasingly touched by how God sees and hears our human hearts.  This is especially true when we are at the end of our rope and our hearts are overwhelmed with trouble.  I see it in the story of Hagar and Ishmael in the wilderness dying from lack of water, and God provided a well.  I see it in the desperate prayer of Hannah who was ridiculed and heartbroken because she was childless, and God provided her with a son – Samuel.  I see it in the widow who was gathering sticks to prepare the little bit of food she had left for her and her son, expecting to die of hunger, and God sent her Elijah and a never-ending supply of food.  I see it in the many psalms of David that start with heartbreak, fear, and desperation, and end with joy.

I hope that through sharing my experience, I can bring hope to you today in whatever your heart is aching over.

It is one thing to read it and study it.  It is another thing altogether to experience it.  I was blessed recently to have that kind of experience – one where God knew the inner recesses of my heart and my desperate concern, and helped in a way that was undeniably Him. I was also overwhelmed, awed, and humbled.  And I hope that through sharing my experience, I can bring hope to you today in whatever your heart is aching over.

I have always had a soft place in my heart for animals, especially strays. 

I have always had a soft place in my heart for animals, especially strays.  They are so much more dependent and vulnerable than the people who take them in and then abandon them.  Much of my life I have supported the local Humane Society and have taken in, found homes for, or just fed and comforted many strays.  The desperate hunger and fear they are living in breaks my heart.  It is just the way God created me.  Usually it wasn’t a problem – they would show up one or two at a time.  They would spend a little of their life near my home, getting help before disappearing, or they would be invited in to be one of my handful of house pets.  It was always manageable. 

I ended up with a stray cat colony on my hands. 

That all changed this summer.  I ended up with a stray cat colony on my hands.  Several cats discovered my soft spot for providing food, water, and housing to strays.  To make matters worse, these cats had never been tamed to be approachable.  They were the offspring of an abandoned mother cat.  I had kept them going through the winter, but a couple new batches of kittens arrived and I had to do something.  Adding to the concern was the fact that I was planning to move.  I would no longer be here to care for them.

All I could see was death for these helpless little creatures.

As I tend to do, I started out trying to take care of the problem all by myself.  It was that old self-sufficiency that defined who I was for so long.   I researched and ruminated – thinking over and over about how best to deal with this problem.  I didn’t want to quit feeding these cats who had become so used to me being their food source – they would starve.  I didn’t want to catch and surrender them to animal control to be put down.  All I could see was death for these helpless little creatures. The best plan I could come up with was to start cutting back on their food little by little, trying to force them to go find food in the wild.  And to trap them to have them spayed and neutered. 

My heart was breaking as my feeble plan to save them was unraveling.

That plan was not going at all well.  The cats were not ever leaving to go find their own food.  They were just getting more and more hungry and skinny, crying out to me to feed them.  Plus, I could never figure out how to trap one cat at a time to have them fixed, while continuing to feed the others.  I was getting more and more frustrated and hopeless.  My heart was breaking as my feeble plan to save them was unraveling.

I threw myself at the feet of Jesus and cried out for help.

Then I did what I should have done in the first place.  I threw myself at the feet of Jesus and cried out for help.  Looking back, I wonder why it takes me so long to set aside my own self-sufficiency and turn to the One who always has the answers.  Sometimes it is pride – I truly like the feeling of accomplishing something challenging on my own.  Sometimes it is fear.  My human nature doesn’t always trust that God will come through for me.  This time, with these stray cats, it just seemed so trivial and silly compared to other people’s struggles.  I mean, a stray cat problem seems so small compared to fighting cancer or losing a loved one or any of the other really devastating things people go through.  Why would a God who has so many other big things to deal with bother to help me and a few feral cats?

He cares for the sparrow, for young ravens, for stray cats, and for me. 

But God does bother to help me because He is not a God who has limitations.  He is infinite – in all things, knowing all things, creator of all things.  There is nothing too trivial for Him – nothing too small.  He made every microscopic atom and He knows where each atom is at every moment.  I just didn’t trust that I was important enough to Him that He would care about my small concerns.  I didn’t trust that even the small cats He created mattered enough to Him that He would care what happened to them. But in desperation I prayed.  And I researched – not on the internet this time, but in His Word.  And I found that He does care.  He cares for the sparrow, for young ravens, for stray cats, and for me. 

“He gives the wild animals their food, including the young ravens when they cry.”

Psalm 147:9

I found the following verses.  First was Matthew 6:26: “Look at the birds in the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they?”  And later, in Matthew 10:29, we find, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care.”  I knew those verses well – the idea of His eye is on the sparrow.  But sparrows are not these human-dependent stray cats.  I was comforted, but not yet convinced.  Then I found a verse I wasn’t as familiar with:  Psalm 147:9.  It reads, “He gives the wild animals their food, including the young ravens when they cry.”  The word “young” hit my heart.  I had young kittens out there, and they were crying.  Would God really provide for them?  I clung to this verse as my hope.

God works, but He often waits for my full surrender first. 

As I have learned, God works, but He often waits for my full surrender first.  I had to step outside of my own plans and my own self-sufficiency to allow Him the space to do the miraculous.  After reading the verse about the young ravens, I was ready to surrender.  I offered these cats up to God.  I told Him that if there was no other way, I would either trust Him to take care of them when I had to move, or to help me gather them up to allow animal control to send them to be with Him.  It hurt so much because, still, all I could see was death as the end for these cats.  My heart was shattered as I mentally made my plans fall out of my grasp. 

Where I saw death, God saw a new life.

Submission is so hard and yet so powerful!  Where I saw death, God saw a new life.  Where I saw hopeless, God saw miraculous.  But He couldn’t show me what He saw until I was willing to take my eyes off myself and put them on Him.  As I emptied my heart to Him, He started filling me with a plan.  I had been afraid and ashamed to ask for help from other people, wondering if they would judge me for allowing this problem to develop.  But He brought to mind the ones who had the resources and willingness to help me – people I had met through my past experiences with the Humane Society.  Soon, I had humane traps and moral support.  At least I could get them fixed so no more kittens would join the group.

In a matter of days, all the cats had places to go to be cared for. 

But it was so much bigger than that.  Those people knew other people.  In a matter of days, all the cats had places to go to be cared for.  The older cats were to go to a farm where they would have shelter and food, as well as helping keep down the rodent population.  The littlest kittens would go to be tamed and adopted out to homes.  All I had to do was catch them and get the older ones fixed.  It felt insurmountable how I was going to catch all those cats, but they had a chance for life now.

God wasn’t done with me yet.  He gave me a plan to catch the cats.  I got them used to coming into my garage to eat with the idea that they would be easier to catch in a small, confined space.  He arranged for a free spay and neuter clinic to be willing to take them all the same day to be fixed.  He gave me friends who had a vehicle that could safely transport them.  On the day before I was to take them, I opened the garage to let them in for food, and then closed the door on them.  Almost all the cats were in the garage.  I was only lacking one adult and a couple of kittens.

It was a miracle not much smaller than the parting of the Red Sea. 

That afternoon, I set the traps, not at all trusting that they would work.  I had visions of chasing feral cats around my garage, getting scratched and bitten as the cats fled and fought in terror.  But God had this.  Within an hour, all the cats were in traps and cages.  Anyone who has worked with feral cats knows that is a miracle not much smaller than the parting of the Red Sea.  Even more amazing, the missing adult came into the garage later, went right to a trap, and walked in! The last kittens went easily into traps outside, and soon all of the cats were confined.  The spaying and neutering went well.  The adults were easily rounded back up into cages a couple of days later.  The lady at the farm was thrilled to get the barn cats she had been waiting months for.  The kittens were starting to be tamed down.  All of the cats were at their new homes being cared for in a week. 

There was literally not a single cat that God didn’t remember.

The people that helped me were amazed.  Trapping, transporting, and rehoming feral cats is a very difficult and sometimes impossible job.  Never does it go that easily.  But even then, God wasn’t done yet.  I had one more stray.  This one had been abandoned and was used to being around humans.  She was very sweet and had been living in my garage for a couple of years.  I could never introduce her into my home because my two old house cats would not accept her.  I loved her and it was breaking my heart that there was no way to take her when I moved.  But God knew about her, too.  One of the ladies who stepped up to help me adopted my sweet little garage cat.  She now sleeps on the bed and is groomed, loved, and happy.  There was literally not a single cat that God didn’t remember.

If God loves me enough to give me a miracle with some feral cats, how much more can I trust Him to be there in the big stuff?

A group of stray cats seems a silly way for God to show His love, mercy, and glory.  But why should it seem that way?  How else can He show that He is concerned with every little detail in our lives – every heartache, every fear, every problem?  Sometimes His actions in the things we don’t think are worthy of His attention show His love and involvement more than the big stuff.  If God loves me enough to give me a miracle with some feral cats I was tender-hearted about, how much more can I trust Him to be there in the big stuff?  How can I ever think that there is a time when He doesn’t hold me in His hand?

God takes a broken and crushed heart and returns a rejoicing, redeemed soul. 

This one little miracle – this one incident of His eye being on the sparrow – has meant more to me than perhaps any other time He has given me help.  That’s because it was such a seemingly insignificant thing.  But He knew that in my heart, as I worried and cried and visualized the worst for these little animals I had taken on, I had the same hopelessness and despair that I had felt in the bigger problems.  He alone knew the depth of my suffering and fear.  He alone found the solution.  God takes fear and returns hope.  God takes death and returns life.  God takes a broken and crushed heart and returns a rejoicing, redeemed soul.  And, just as on the day that I accepted Jesus as my Savior, all it took was for me to let go of control and submit it all to Him.

I hope today’s message touched your heart, increased your understanding, and encouraged you.  Praying the peace and comfort of Christ Jesus on your life.