I told you what a wonderful cat Moja became. He used to perch on top the big water bottle and when the man would bring us a new one, he was a little afraid of Moja. He looked so much like a lion. Moja was something!
He was nice. He would curl up in your arms and purr.
But there was one lesson Moja seemed he just couldn’t learn. He always refused to use the sandbox! He insisted on making his mess on the floor somewhere.
So I dutifully cleaned up after him all the time. Just endured it, because we liked him. He was part of our family.
And I often took Moja to church Sabbath morning for some children’s story. I used him as an illustration. And you can be sure, the kids all loved Moja. Each wanted to be the one to go get him when story time came just before the sermon. In fact, the whole church enjoyed and loved Moja.
But I finally got very tired of cleaning up his messes. I knew I couldn’t give him away to anyone, for no one would want those messes on his carpet. So I decided I had no choice but to take Moja down to the pound and let them just put him to sleep.
So I thought I should let the children at church say “goodbye” to him so I took him for my story and told them what was going to have to happen. It wasn’t because I didn’t love Moja, for I did love him; but we just couldn’t forever have those messes in our nice clean house. He had disqualified himself from being a part of our family! So, he had to go. Goodbye, Moja.
Then I told the children, that’s what it’s going to be like in the final judgment of the people who will be lost. God has always loved those people, but they themselves have disqualified themselves from getting ready to enter heaven. God still will love every one who must go into the lake of fire, but those people would keep on making the mess of sin in heaven; God can’t let that keep on happening in heaven. And that’s the reason for the Bible teaching of the “punishment of the wicked.”
Well, I thought I had at last found the perfect children’s story. And yes, I knew that the children would feel sorry (you never saw kids pet a cat like they were petting Moja after that; they didn’t want to say goodbye to him). But feeling sorry is just how God feels, only in a much bigger way. And it’s not wrong for children to feel a little bit how God feels.
“As surely as I, the Sovereign Lord, am the living God, I do not enjoy seeing a sinner die” (Ezekiel 33:11).
But what happened next made me change my mind. When I was shaking hands at the door after the worship service, grown-ups were telling me, “I’ll never come back to this church again if you have that cat put to sleep!”
So I took Moja home and I had to bring him back to church again the next Sabbath.
And that’s our next story.