Nice To Meet You

Rich and poor have this in common: The LORD is the Maker of them all.

THE AIR WAS THICK with tension as two animals, vastly different in size and temperament, warily crept toward each other. Stopping three feet apart, they froze. Not a muscle twitch nor a flick of the tail could be detected.

The show-quality Irish setter named Fiona stared intently at the white cat recently dubbed Swiper.

“Mama, are they gonna be friends?” eight-year-old Marlee whispered.

“Shhh . . . ,” her brother Max commanded.

“They’ll be okay,” Catherine spoke softly, hoping she was right. “We just need to let them say hello.”

The family had been working toward this moment for weeks—ever since discovering the stray cat under the deck at the back of the house. Over time, as the cat began losing her fear of the humans who offered her food, she ventured closer and closer to their back door. That fact seemed to highly offend Fiona—who would bark viciously at the strange creature on the deck.

The kids didn’t want to disturb the skittish cat, so they put Fiona on a leash and took her out through the front door whenever she needed to take care of business.

“Poor dog. She can’t even run in her own yard anymore,” Brian, Fiona’s human dad, observed one evening. “I think it’s time the animals meet so Fiona can have her yard back.”

After much protesting, the family decided to intentionally have the two get acquainted.

But now, sensing the potential aggression building in her dog, Catherine was second-guessing the meet-and-greet.

If the cat runs off, the kids are going to be devastated, she thought.

Fiona remained tense, and Catherine kept a tight grip on the leash. Anticipating that Fiona might lunge, she was ready to pull the Irish setter back at any moment—when the cat casually walked over and rubbed her head against the dog’s chest. As if in a trance, Fiona stood motionless, her head cocked to the side. The cat rubbed along Fiona’s side. She brushed against Fiona’s back legs. She even walked under the sixty-pound dog!

Catherine heard her daughter suck in a deep breath.

Apparently satisfied that Fiona meant her no harm, the cat curled up on the deck.

Released from the cat’s mesmerizing power, Fiona bounded over to Swiper. She play-bowed and bumped her nose on the cat. She sniffed the stray’s ears. And then, to the family’s surprise, Fiona lay down right next to the cat.

“I don’t believe it,” Catherine whispered to her husband, who was looking very pleased with himself.

That day marked the beginning of a genuine friendship between the pampered pooch named Fiona and the stray named Swiper.

The two animals were as different as could be—from their size, to their species, to their temperaments. But somehow, someway, they became friends.

Friends who would call to each other from opposite sides of the back door.

Friends who would nuzzle each other and lie together in the sun.

Friends who would walk together in the evening with their human family—Fiona on a leash, Swiper running alongside.

And friends who were not the least bit concerned that people would say they weren’t supposed to be.

Just two friends willing to take the time to get to know each other.

PAWS & PONDER . . .

Fiona and Swiper could not have been more different, and yet their differences are what made their friendship so special. In a world full of divisions—political, socioeconomic, spiritual—it is easy to forget that God is the Maker of us all. What differences are hard for you to see past in others? How do you think God wants his children to respond to those who are different from them?

Paws & Pray

Lord God, you made the world and filled it with people who are different from me in countless ways. God, help me to see others as you see them—fearfully and wonderfully created in your image. And when I become shortsighted and start to focus on the differences, convict me and remind me that you are the Maker and Creator of us all.