Sunday, April 15, 2012

Easter Meows: The Leap

Baxter is a senior cat now. At eleven, he has sown his wide oats and is contented with the simple pleasures of cat life — food, sleep, sunshine and a good scratch. I do not know if Baxter has joined AARC (American Association of Retired Cats), but he definitely lives the retired life style. Still, there is one thing from his youthful prime that Baxter continues to practice with poise and aplomb. He still jumps! He still has the old stuff when it comes to leaping with grace and surprise onto a window sill, a table, the bed, even the roof of my car. He springs into place seemingly effortlessly. He glides through the air and lands where he wants, perfectly in balance. How does he do it?

I read that a cat’s skeletal structure isn’t made like ours. In layman’s terms, they are more loosely connected bone to bone so that they can “spring” from a set position and stretch to a new one without looking contorted or squashed. Their bodies have a lot of “give” to them, and that makes their movements look effortless. Even the old boy, Baxter, hasn’t lost this cat magic.

Nor has God. God is older than all of us. In fact, we gave up trying to count God’s age. It’s impossible, so we say instead that God is eternal, without beginning or end. Yet, like cats, God stays spry in His ability to leap and keep His balance in our lives. That is what He showed us in Christ’s resurrection. Death could not hold God down when Jesus was laid in the tomb. He leaped to new and transformed life, and established a new way of balancing the injustices and unfairness of life through the grace of His Holy Spirit. Love evens the scales. Love springs into action when all else seems lost. Love never grows old, and never dies. As Saint Augustine describes God, He is “Love, ever ancient, ever new.” It’s that Love that saves us through the Easter mysteries of death becoming the springboard to new life.

So don’t give up just because you’re older or feeling older through the weight of life’s burdens of sin and heartache. It is never too late to learn how to leap like a cat, when we let our graceful God land in our hearts and change our way of living. We may aim for places we didn’t think we could reach, and balance ourselves on a crossbeam there that we feared would not support us. But no one expected Jesus to rise from the dead after the cross of Calvary killed Him. Faith is a leap into the mystery of life from death, a leap into the arms of a loving God. So let’s not hold onto ourselves too tightly, or we will land hard and off balance when life moves us. Learn from the Creator of cats. We can still jump at any age, if we allow God to keep us loose and balanced through the power of the Risen Lord.