Turn on your imagination! This story is more fun if you picture your own church pastor as you read (which could be either a man or a woman).
One afternoon, a pastor was sitting in his home office, writing a sermon, when he heard a strange sound. He stopped typing and listened.
“Meeeee-ow!”
His ears perked up. Was that a cat?
“Meeeee-ow!”
The pastor got up and looked out the window. He froze. High in the air, clinging to a wobbly tree branch, was a cat.
Question: Do you have any pets? Have they ever gotten into trouble or done something silly?
“Oh dear,” the pastor thought. “Now what do I do?” The pastor couldn’t ignore the cat, it clearly needed help. So he went outside and walked toward the tree. He reached up, but the branches were far too high.
“Here kitty kitty!” he called.
The cat stared back at him and didn’t move.
The pastor hurried to the garage and returned with a ladder, but when he leaned it against the tree, the tree began to sway. The ladder wobbled. The branches shook. And the cat panicked and scrambled even higher into the flimsy limbs.
“Well,” the pastor said, scratching his head, “this isn’t working.”
Then he had a very creative idea.
Question: What do you think the pastor is going to try?
He went back to the garage, but this time he climbed into his car. He drove over and carefully backed up to the tree. He grabbed some rope, wrapped it around the tree trunk and then hooked it onto his car bumper.
“If I pull just a little,” he thought, “the tree will bend low enough for me to reach the cat.”
Slowly — very slowly — he drove forward.
The tree leaned…
and leaned…
and leaned…
He checked again. “Just a little more,” he said.
But the moment he nudged the car forward…
TWANG!
The rope snapped, the tree sprang upright, and the cat shot into the air like a furry rocket!
Question: What face do you think the pastor made?
The pastor gasped! He looked up. He looked around. The cat was gone.
He searched the yard and asked his neighbors if they had seen a cat flying through the air, but no luck. Puzzled, he eventually gave up the search.
Several days later, the pastor was at the grocery store. As he turned down an aisle, he ran into a woman from his church. They chatted for a moment, but then the pastor noticed something odd in her cart: lots of cat food and kitty litter.
The pastor was surprised. “Did you get a cat?” he asked.
“Oh, Pastor!” she exclaimed, “You will never believe this.”
She explained that her daughter had begged and begged for a cat, but she always told her no. Finally, she told her daughter, “If God gives you a cat, then you may keep it.”
Question: What do you think happened next?
“Well,” she continued, “I watched my daughter go outside, kneel in the yard, and pray. And right then—truly—you won’t believe this—a kitten came flying out of the sky, paws out like a parachute, and landed right in front of her!”
The pastor smiled the biggest smile.
Because he did believe it. He knew that God has a sense of humor and that sometimes, quite literally “every good and perfect gift comes from above.” (James 1:17).
Kelly Wasemiller is a former Adventist educator and now stays at home with her twins. She and her husband live in South Dakota.
