I was so angry. I screamed… I could have cried.

A dead baby rabbit lay at my feet in Tom’s shop. Soft pieces of fur were scattered around my feet.  Our two kittens, sitting nearby were oblivious to the heartbreak they had caused me. Or of the pain to the sweet, innocent bunny.

How could they have done such a thing?  What were they thinking? I wanted no part of these devious small lions!

I ignored them for a few hours, trying to understand this is what they do… this is “normal”. Can I continue to love them if they keep doing what is “normal”— attacking bunnies and my beautiful birds? That evening by the firepit, JJ climbed in my lap and sat watching the fire, content to be near me, Jinny sat with Tom— both so meek, unaware of their sordid conduct, but fully aware that we evidently still loved them.  JJ snuggled his head under the shelter of my arm.“You are forgiving and good, O Lord, abounding in love to all who call to you” (Psalm 86:5).

I know all analogies break down, but I sense affirmation of my Father’s unfailing love as I consider the kittens’ typical heartless actions in regard to my human, selfish “normal” ways.

The following  is a page from Reflections for Ragamuffins by Brennan Manning, p 125, 1997. Manning is a favorite writer on the love of Jesus!

“In the winter of 1968-69, I lived in a cave in the mountains of the Zaragosa Desert in Spain…

On the night of December 13, during what began as a long and lonely hour of prayer, I heard in faith Jesus Christ say, ‘For love of you, I left my Father’s side. I came to you who ran from me, fled me, who did not want to hear my name. For love of you I was covered with spit, punched, beaten and affixed to the wood of the cross.’

These words are burned on my life. Whether I am in a state of grace or disgrace, elation or depression, that night of fire quietly burns on. I looked at the crucifix for a long time, figuratively saw the blood streaming from every pore of his body, and heard the cry of his wounds: ‘This isn’t a joke. It is not a laughing matter to me that I have loved you.’ The longer I looked, the more I realized that no man has ever loved me and no one ever could love me as he did. I went out of the cave, stood on the precipice and shouted into the darkness, “Jesus, are you crazy? Are you out of your mind to have loved me so much?” I learned that night what a wise old man had told me years earlier: ‘Only the one who has experienced it can know what the love of Jesus Christ is. Once you have experienced it, nothing else in the world will seem more beautiful or desirable.'”

“I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness” (Jeremiah 31:3).

And it doesn’t matter if I have killed a baby rabbit.