“I had been told that the training procedure with cats was difficult. It’s not. Mine had me trained in two days.” Bill Dana

“Then the king commanded Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility, youths without blemish, of good appearance and skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding learning, and competent to stand in the king’s palace, and to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans. The king assigned them a daily portion of the food that the king ate, and of the wine that he drank. They were to be educated for three years, and at the end of that time they were to stand before the king. Among these were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah of the tribe of Judah. And the chief of the eunuchs gave them names: Daniel he called Belteshazzar, Hananiah he called Shadrach, Mishael he called Meshach, and Azariah he called Abednego.” Daniel 1:3-21

A lot of people do not like cats because of their aloofness and their independence. Cats and dogs will both greet you at the door — but cats will abandon you as soon as they determine you are not going to feed them. Dogs and cats both want you to pet them – but one of my cats will bite you as soon as you linger in the petting department too long. Cats and dogs both look out the window – and while your dog is watching for you to come home, my cats are watching the birds, squirrels, and rabbits, if not the leaves blowing around the yard and squeaking the entire time. If you come home, they only want to know if you are ready to feed them yet. And, if you spend some time training your dog, you might get them to roll over, shake hands and perhaps play dead in a brief Shakespearean manner. Trying to train your cat is like trying to get Lutherans to sit in the front of the church – neither of them do that.

We must never give up on teaching the faith – to our children and to new converts to the faith. In fact all of us could use a good refresher course on the basics of faith once in a while – including the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostle’s Creed and the teachings of Jesus. It is clear to me that many in our churches today are biblically illiterate. We do not encourage people to memorize scripture any more. The most many Lutherans may know about scripture is the parts of our liturgy they have memorized and say rotely every Sunday morning. And they probably do not know that our liturgy is mostly comprised of scripture.

My cats may not be interested in any training, but we should always be looking for ways to train ourselves in faithful living, and train ourselves in learning the basics of the faith.

Pastor Dave