An Ode to Lily of Sorts

Yesterday, we buried our cat, Lily, of 12 1/2 years.  She was a good ol' girl.  She had been with Emily and me longer than we'd been married.  We got her around Easter in 2000.  She was white with a gray spot on the top of her head.  We named her Lily for Easter.  She lived with Emily in her apartment for a while, then with me in my first parsonage before we married. 

While we were on our honeymoon, she jumped in the trunk of my friend who was staying at the parsonage and preaching for me on Sunday.  He didn't realize it till he opened his trunk in Auburn, Alabama and out jumped Lily.  We came home and thought she was dead.  She was just taking a road trip. 



Lily in her healthier days

She was a huntress, too.  She was mostly outside but came into relax and eat.  She brought home moles, birds, squirrels, chipmunks and even rabbits.  She learned her way around the farmland near my first parsonage, our first neighborhood in Gwinnett, and the neighborhood we live in now.  No matter how long she was gone wandering, Lily always came back.

But she was getting sick, not eating and getting infections.  It was time to let her go.  The boys helped dig a hole in our backyard and we buried her in there with some cards they wrote her and her tag and collar.  My children are Christian children.  They are Resurrection children.  They believe in heaven.  They believe in the resurrection.  One of them said, "We'll see her in heaven when we all come back alive again, right daddy?"  I read the Bible a lot.  I have a Master of Divinity from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.  I'm in my 13th year of full-time ministry.  And I just looked at him and said, "I don't know."

I don't know if animals go to heaven.  I don't know exactly how it all works at the resurrection.  One part of me says that only humans have souls.  The other part of me says that Christ has come to redeem all creation.  Who the heck knows?  But, it lends itself to a deeper point.  There's a lot that I don't know.  There are a lot of questions that simply aren't answered in the Scriptures.  There are some questions that are even raised.  And we've become obsessed with knowing it all.  I don't think we have to know it all.  I think the point is in focusing on what we do know.

I know Jesus.  I know Jesus lived.  I believe he is who he said he was.  I believe he died for me.  I believe he resurrected.  I believe he loves me and forgives me.  I believe he's coming again.  And I believe I'm at my best when I am being who he wants me to be (and I'm happiest then, too).  I know those things.  That's enough to keep me busy the rest of my life doing His will.  And because we know those essential things, we've got to be able to have the margin to say "I don't know."  The world so desperately needs us Christians to stop pretending we know everything and start telling them the most important thing we do know.  Jesus is real...and he loves you.