Not Willing to Separate

The ad read, “Two adult sister cats in need of a good home.  Willing to separate.”

Willing to separate?  Two fully grown sister cats?  No, no!

My husband and I were looking for two cats and had already met a brother/sister pair named Rico and Luna that we were inclined to bring home with us.  But I was still looking at notices.  It was the “willing to separate” that caught my eye.

“Rick, look!  Here are sisters who’ve never been apart and the owner is willing to split them up.  We’ve got to go look at them!”  And so we did.

We were goners as soon as our gazes fell upon beautiful long-black-furred Min and a very portly and very lovely tawny tabby named Ping.  Soon they were each in a carrier in our backseat crying and carrying on at their sudden change in circumstances.  That didn’t last long.  Four days later they’d settled enough to show themselves, make tentative approaches to us, and look generally like they were going to get by all right in our home. They eventually grew to love us, and we most certainly loved them.

Willing to separate – what ominous-sounding words!  No one wants to be separated from a loved one.  Even cats.

And God does not wish to be separated from us, as evidenced by the price He paid to make it possible for us to be together.  The prospect of living without us, His beloved, forever, caused Him to take the most dramatic action possible – He gave His very own life to ensure us the opportunity to choose it; that is, life with Him.  A relationship with us – each of us individually – is what He wants more than anything else.  We’re His family.  “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!  And that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1, NIV).

The best-known verse in all of scripture tells us why He wants this relationship with us: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16, NKJV).  In short, He loves us, supremely and absolutely, and He wishes to have us with Him.  He craves our company. He wants to be with us!  This is almost beyond our ability to comprehend.  We don’t even like each others’ company much of the time.  But this is not true of God, fortunately for us all.  We’re each the apple of His eye (Deuteronomy 32:10, Psalm 17:8, Proverbs 7:2, Zechariah 2:8), and provision has been made for all of us to be saved.

No, God did not bow to the prospect of being separated from us when sin intruded and it might have appeared that that was the inevitable outcome.  Instead, He took measures to stay in touch with us, hold us together, and save us to live again, with Him.

Min and Ping could easily have been separated.  They were not.  Neither need we be separated from God nor He from us.  It’s our choice.

“Children, come to Me,” He pleads.  “I love you.  I’ve made it possible for us to spend eternity together.  It’s what I most want.  Please come.  I am not willing to separate.”