There’s an old saying: “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” Well, this past week, my wife modified the saying slightly to say, “You can lead a cat to water, but you can’t make him drink,” thus providing the title to this blog. The occasion for the new saying is one of the reasons my blogging has been delayed: our cat, Charco*, suddenly got sick, started hiding out all day and night, and stopped eating and drinking for almost a week. I took him to the vet twice, including one 3:00 am trip, for hydration shots, and we have been trying all kinds of things to get him to eat and drink something. The good news is that after five days he finally came out and started eating; the bad news is that after eight days he still isn’t drinking from his water bowl, which he always loved to do. As my wife said, you really can’t make a cat drink. (By the way, after vet exams and blood work, Charco was pronounced a healthy cat! Healthy, except for being sick . . .)
As I thought about this experience, several ideas, or lessons, came to mind that I believe are worth sharing.
- God’s mandate at creation was for us to care for what he has created. Ever since our first parents were placed in the Garden of Eden, God has charged us with the proper management of the land, plants, and animals (Genesis 1:28 “have dominion over every living thing” and 2:15 “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”). All living things are God’s, which he declares in Psalm 50:10-11, “For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine.” Therefore, we are responsible to our Creator to properly care for all he has made. All Christians who take God’s ownership of the earth seriously, should be ardent environmentalists, not in the sense of radicals who think the world would be better without humans, but in the sense of being true stewards who protect what God has made and given to us for our blessing. This means in my case, to care for the animal God brought into our life at a time when I needed a special blessing.
- Though sickness and death affect all living creatures, God still loves what he has made. Jesus reminds us in Matthew 6:26, “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.” And when God threatened to destroy the great city of Nineveh, he sent Jonah to warn them, saying he took pity on the people and on the “many cattle” who lived there (Jonah 4:11). Even when God’s wrath was poured out by flooding the whole earth due to mankind’s overwhelming sinfulness, he preserved animals as well as humans on the ark (even though we wish some insects like flies and mosquitoes would have missed the boat!). The Bible calls Jesus the Good Shepherd who cares for his sheep, using the analogy of a shepherd who goes out to save his lost sheep (which we are!). And when God wanted to show his wisdom and power to Job, he used two of the animals which he had created as evidence of his greatness: behemoth and leviathan, mighty land and sea creatures, respectively.
- Pets are more than just animals. The fact we call them “pets” is evidence of that. Though my wife and I have often said, “He’s just a cat” about Charco, meaning there are limits to what we would do for him, when it came down to this week, we found ourselves worrying, working at feeding him, petting him, and spending hundreds of dollars on his medical care and medicines. He’s not a child, nor are we “pet parents.” But we find that he has a special place in our hearts just for who he is. He doesn’t actively do anything for us; he doesn’t do tricks, fetch my slippers, or even come every time we call him. He is, after all, a cat. But he does amuse us, and we care for him. In this way, our relationship to him is similar to God’s relationship to us: we don’t earn God’s love and grace by what we do for him; he loves us because of who he is. We are just people – sinful and imperfect – yet to God we are more than just animals he created. By his love, he considers us as valuable enough for Christ to die for, and desires us to be with him in paradise. He does not desire for any of us to perish (2 Peter 3:9) but considers us to be of far more value than the birds of the air (Matthew 6:26 again) or many sparrows (Luke 12:7). We are not just God’s pets, either; he calls all of us who believe in Christ to be his children (John 1:12).
- You can lead a cat to water, but you can’t make him drink. Charco resists our efforts to get him to drink. I tried reasoning with him but he just stared blankly. I tried threatening him, but he just yawned. Karen changed his water bowls and where they are placed, but he just said, “Puhleeaze” and walked away. Karen finally mixed water in with the food he ate, so he is getting some water. But even though we knew he needed to drink, he just isn’t going along with the program.Which leads me to my final observation:
- You can lead a person to Christ, but you can’t make him or her believe. As with cats and horses, so with us human beings, if not with water, then with matters of faith. We read in the Bible and see in the world around us, that you can proclaim the Gospel, explain the Scriptures, show evidence in your life of what Christ has done for you, answer objections, explain the benefits (here and in eternity) of faith in Christ, and talk until you’re blue in the face, but you can’t make someone believe. This has been true ever since Christ himself walked the earth. There was a rich young ruler who was devout in his Jewish faith, but when Jesus told him to sell his wealth and follow him, the man walked away. When Jesus proclaimed his Messiahship at his home synagogue, the people tried to throw him off a cliff. When he did miracles in front of the Pharisees, they accused him of breaking the Sabbath law and of using the devil’s power. Worst, after personally witnessing three years of Jesus’s authoritative preaching, teaching, and performing incredible miracles, one of his closest disciples betrayed him and another denied him. Later, Paul taught two Roman governors who held him in prison, Felix and Festus, and King Agrippa, about Christ, but they didn’t respond in faith to what they heard (Acts 25 and 26). As in biblical times, so today. When I was pastoring, many of our members came to me, lamenting that they had family members who were raised in church but didn’t believe in Jesus anymore. We all know other people who know about Christ and Christianity who have chosen other religions or consider themselves atheists (or agnostics, as if that were a kinder, gentler way of saying they don’t believe). In almost all these situations, the problem is not lack of knowledge, but a lack of faith. Which is not a good thing, because “without faith, it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews 11:6).
- So how does a person come to believe in Christ? First, they need to hear the Gospel. Paul tells us in Romans 10:13-14 that we are charged with teaching people the Gospel: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” The Word of God works on their hearts and minds and spirit to produce faith, which is created in them by the work of the Holy Spirit. It is a supernatural act which cannot be done by our own effort (as hearers or teachers) but by God himself. That is why he tells us in Ephesians 2:10, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” This truth is echoed in Luther’s Small Catechism, which says in explanation of the Third Article of the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.” Therefore, although we present the Gospel of Jesus Christ to people in love for them and in obedience to Christ’s command to evangelize the world, we cannot make them believe. We do the best job we can and then pray for them to believe, and for God to work in their hearts to create that saving faith we all need.
Thanks be to God that he loves us as much as he does, and that he is more patient with us than Karen and I are with Charco. For as we know that our cat needs water to live, so our Lord knows we need faith in his Son to live forever. He has told us that without him, we are planted in a desert, a dry and thirsty land (Ezekiel 19:13). So don’t let that thirst ruin you: drink deeply of the Living Water he has given for us!
Now may the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.
Read: Job chapters 1-4, Acts 26
* Charco is not short for “charcoal,” even though he has black fur; it’s short for “Charcot,” the name of the foot disease that I came down with just before we got him as a kitten. My wife’s idea, since she wanted something good to come out of this, and for the name to mean something good. So now we have the only cat in history ever named after a foot disease.