Don’t live with pigs who trample life and love

Knowing I had an extra room in our house, I was open to the idea of a roommate. A lady called to inquire as to whether or not my house is quiet. “Yes,” I answered. She decided to move in. I decided it was on a trial basis. Within a week I asked her to move. She touted cleanliness to the point the house felt dirty. She was indignant if a piece of clothing was on the floor, even in the laundry room nonetheless. More critical, she didn’t like my cat, even though she professed to.

You can’t fool a cat.

I felt lousy for a few days, as though I wasn’t trying to get along with this new roommate, as though I was supposed to be more loving. But there comes a time when practicing Christ Jesus’ theory about “pearls and pigs” pays off in a sense of rightness.

The Gospel Matthew records Jesus as saying, “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.” (Matt. 7:6)

The love my cat expresses is genuinely, unquestionably sacred. I cringed when I heard the roommate reprimand my cat for eating a fly. She scolded him for eating a living creature, when the roommate herself just finished off a piece of roast-beef.

Needless to say, I did ask her to move with a Christlike attitude, well, as Christlike as my understanding had it. It just wasn’t working. She moved.

Being told how to live in your own house doesn’t fly too far. I like a clean house, but to live under the strictures of some human ideology of what a house should look like, and how others should act, is not living.

I can tell living when I see it.

Yesterday, our daughter came to visit. After about 4 hours, I walked into the bathroom and an enormous smile came across my face. “This is living,” I thought. While our daughter was in the other room hugging our cat, I took the picture below.