Rhonda Reese Purtee

This is my daughter Jaqulynn’s cat, Darla. She’s a bit of a diva. I’m visiting with Jaqulynn, Joel and my grandson Reese for a couple of weeks and part of that equation is an understanding that the queen size guest bed actually belongs to Darla and she permits me to utilize the bed for the length of my stay provided I don’t do anything crazy like roll over in bed at any point during the night once she has positioned herself for sleep. She is perhaps the world’s most fastidiously groomed cat. She spends the bulk of her life getting her fur to lay perfectly. She actually jumps into the bathtub to wash her feet following a trip to the litter pan. If Max (the younger cat in residence) fails to groom himself to her standards, she will wait for him to go to sleep, hold him down and do it for him. So, you can probably imagine how often she permits a one-year old baby to grab her with his sticky hands and plant a big, wet, cheerio-encrusted kiss onto her perfect self. It is not happening. But multiple times every day, Reese will see her sitting tantalizingly close, a grin will bloom as he toddles her direction, reaches out to grab a handful of fur, only to have her effortlessly move beyond his reach; again, and again, and again. And he’ll try again tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. He doesn’t get discouraged. It doesn’t even occur to him that it might be a wasted effort, that he should just give up. And, what we all know, except perhaps HRH Darla, is that one day his balance will be good enough, he will move just quick enough, and his reach will finally be long enough to catch her and give her that squishy hug and wet kiss.  

Paul wrote about our spiritual reach and his desire to keep improving, to keep growing in his letter to the Philippian church. He says, “Not that I have already reached the goal or am already fully mature, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I also have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus. Brothers, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 3:12-14). You know, if one of the guys that God chose to write the Bible is saying that he hasn’t reached the top of the mountain yet; that he has a deeper level of commitment, a higher level of maturity that he is reaching for then I should certainly never allow myself to stop reaching for all the grace, all the love, all the growth that God has promised to me. I’ll keep watching Reese reaching out to take hold of Darla, and be encouraged to keep reaching forward, to take hold of God’s promises in my life.