Are You The Cat In The Box?
Carrie Clark lost her cat, Galena, last month. She and her husband live in Utah, where the cat seemed to disappear. Four weeks later, she got a call from a veterinarian 700 miles away in Southern California. Amazon dropped the cat off with them. Yes, Amazon!
Evidently, when packing up a return item, the cat jumped into the box and hid under the packing material. They taped up the box not knowing Galena was inside. Somehow, the cat survived its six day road trip taped inside a box. When the return worker in Los Angeles discovered her, she called the vet. Fortunately, Carrie had Galena microchipped when she was a kitten, and she and Galena were reconciled.
Galena may have been lost, wayward, confined, and confused, but her ownership had not been released. She had a chip under her skin that identified who she was and who she belonged to.
And you might find yourself in a terrible situation. You might be wishing you had never jumped into that box. You feel confined and confused, with the world dark around you and you don’t know how to get back. But if you’ve trusted Jesus for your salvation (Ephesians 2:8-9), you have the seal of God within you to prove His ownership. You belong to Him no matter what.
“When you believed in Christ, He identified you as His own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom He promised long ago. The Spirit is God’s guarantee that He will give us the inheritance He promised and that He has purchased us to be His own people” (Ephesians 1:13-14 NLT).
The beautiful thing is our Owner is a lot more powerful than Carrie. He knows where you are and what trouble you are in. And He’s looking for you to reach out to Him. He’ll gladly bring you back into your right place and restore your connection with Him. Though your companionship with God may have been severed, your ownership is not in doubt. Neither is His love for you and refusal to give you up.
“And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38–39 NLT).