2014 Lenten Devotional

March 15, 2014

By Rev. Kathleen Kline Moore

When I am afraid, I will trust in you.  Psalm 56:3

We’ve taken to calling her Midnight.  She’s a black cat, dark as burnt coal, who hovers around our front porch. A stray, we have watched her grow up…the only other cat that our tortie, Bethany, will allow to traverse her territory.  Bethany watches her from the inside window.

It’s been over a year now.  Midnight has remained fearful, illusive.  Whenever the door opens she runs.  When one of us arrives home, she leaps off our front porch into the protective shelter of the bushes below.  But the other day something changed.  As I opened the front door to retrieve the morning paper, there she was…her back characteristically hunched in a protective stance, frozen, staring with her eyes into mine.  But this time she didn’t move!  She didn’t run!  She stayed right there and I couldn’t help but freeze with her for a few seconds.  It was a silent gift of delicate, prayerful trust.  Then, as if she realized what was going on, she jumped back down to the cover of the bushes.  And I began to wonder how long it would be before I could actually touch her, until she trusted me enough to forgo her primal fears.

Sometimes trust takes a long, long time to develop.  I had been feeding Midnight steadily on our front porch for over a year.  Yet as much as I could sense her desire to come closer, she would stand distanced, watching.  I can’t figure what it was that broke through her cat barrier.  Did she suddenly understand that she could count on her daily bread?  Or that I, uncharacteristic for me, wouldn’t push her too hard, try and pet her when she was not ready?  Or was it simply time ~ the time it takes to learn to trust in someone or something when it is in your nature to be cautious or to fear.  Sometimes I think that learning to trust is actually a choice we make, for we can never know what the future will hold.

The Psalmist reminds us that when we are feeling persecuted and burdened with fear, God is reliable and fearless for us. When we place our trust in God (and the goodness of each one of us when acting according to God’s purposes), our fears need not overtake us for we will know that God is protecting our vulnerabilities.  As long as we are acting in alignment with what we understand as God’s desires, we can replace our fear with faith.

Whether Midnight replaced her fear with faith is unknown to me!  But as Midnight reminds me, trust must be earned, and often re-earned.  It must be constantly nurtured, proven, restored and it must live respectfully; thoughtfully of the fears that each of us face.  But perhaps this might be Midnight’s best lesson: Whenever our actions are determined by what we might lose, rather than what we might gain, we are allowing our fears to make our decisions for us.

This Lenten season it is my prayer that, like Midnight, we can keep jumping on the porch– day by day receiving the manna that transforms our attitudes and perspectives and will lead us, eventually, to life lived in the creative freedom of God’s overwhelming, ever growing love.