A Gutted Cat

​We have two one-year-old littermate girl cats. Karyssa adores them.
 
We also feed a few neighborhood cats in our backyard. We’ve given them names.
           
A few Saturdays ago, Karyssa went to throw something in the backyard trashcan. She came back inside quickly. “Dad, come here. Something happened to one of the backyard cats.”
 
It was gruesome.
 
A creature had gutted the orange tabby and eaten out its insides. The rib cage was twisted and in plain view. Not good.
 
Karyssa and I talked about it. Then I got a shovel and took care of the body.
 
Later, Karyssa and I were sitting in her room, and she was holding one of our cats, a plump, round kitty named Chesha. “Oh, Chesha,” Karyssa said. “I hope what happened to that cat doesn’t happen to you… But, of course, it would take the monster a long time to reach your ribs.”
 
Karyssa paused. Then she laughed. Large and loud.
 
I was proud of her. The world is a rough place. Some of that rough-and-tumble has nothing to do with us. Some of it has everything to do with us.
 
But in the words of the legendary rock band The Smiths, “There is a light that never goes out.”
 
For followers of Jesus, that Light is Christ. When days darken, we remember that Light. When cruelty leaps out at us, we recall how Christ’s Light never goes out because – ironically – it did go out.
 
Herod the Great tried to put Christ’s light out when Jesus was a toddler. Herod failed. We remember this every Christmas.
 
Herod’s son, Antipas, succeeded with a Roman cross. Yet the Light rose. This is Easter.
 
I’m proud of my daughter because she saw death, and yet she remembered the light.
 
May we all be so blessed.