Graceful Napping

Aren’t naps just a luxury? I fell asleep in a big overstuffed chair in a bookstore once but the kids woke me up because I was drooling and they were embarrassed. Cats aren’t like that. They don’t embarrass their offspring when they nap. They are perrrfectly natural at it. Cats just close their eyes and drift off into sleep in the coziest positions and places. We used to have a cat who loved to curl up and nap on the hearthstone when the fire was burning.

One morning I came down to the living room early. I thought I was the first one up but then I noticed that Holly, then a little mite of five or six years old, had gotten up first. She was still in her yellow flannel gown her mother made her. She was curled up into a little ball like a kitten, sleeping in a patch of sunlight that was streaming through the window. The sunlight made a pattern on the floor and Holly curled up right in it.

Immediately I thought of a phrase in the book of Jude verse 21; ” – keep yourself in the love of God – ” The love of God has flowed steadily into my life, all my life, in a thousand ways. I do not have to ask God to love me. I do not have to motivate him to love me. I do not have to be good to be loved. The love of God streams into my life every day like sunlight through the window. When I abide in his love and stay in fellowship with Him, when I remember the love of God for me, then I experience the love that is always there. I’m sure that’s what Jude meant when he wrote; ” – keep yourself in the love of God – ” John was the Apostle of love, he called himself the disciple whom Jesus loved. It was John who recorded one of Jesus’ final instructions for his followers; “Abide in my love – ” (John 15:9)

When I find ways to love Jesus and when I discover new ways he loves me I am “keeping myself in the love of God.” That’s when I curl up in the love of God like a kitten on the hearth, like a little child napping in a patch of sun.

Ken Pierpont
Oak Brook, Illinois
February 13, 2006