For me this thanksgiving marked the beginning of the holiday season, and this time the season is going to be full of “first time” events for me and Beth. We will have the first thanksgiving dinner as a family, the first family Christmas, the first New Year ’s celebration as Romeros’. Yes, this year we will have plenty of reasons to be thankful for, but we will be particularly thankful for a peculiar experience we had with a kitten.

We named him Moses. We found him in the middle of the street on thanksgiving weekend. Tiny and helpless, he was at the mercy of anyone who would have enough compassion to take him in or take him out. He wasn’t the cutest kitten, his face was dirty, his breath smelled a little bit funny, he was a bit too skinny for his size and his eyelids would seal shut with all the dried slimy build up in his eyes. But we took him home and grew very fond of the little guy very quickly. For the next couple of nights Beth and I found ourselves praying for a way to keep him or a good home — mostly for a way to keep him. On our own the best we could come up with was a trip to the city’s animal shelter where Moses would surely end up being euthanized.

So what was it about this little kitten that tucked at our heart’s strings so much? I think in part it was because Bethie and I were involved in caring for something/someone other than ourselves together, but for me Moses became a little symbol of how easy its become to do away with what we no longer want. We give away what we think is old, or ugly or what we have little use for, an old coat, an old friend or a helpless kitten.

So often I have felt very much like this little kitten — unwanted and uncared for. I think that for this reason I wanted to care for little Moses so very much. You see the fact is that in one way or another we all take turns feeling like “the least of these“, unwanted and uncared for. Moses reminded me of what it has been like to be at the complete mercy of someone else when my turn has come.

In the end God helped us find a home for Moses, in a very unlikely place — our Dentist’s office. I doubt that Moses will go on to part any bowls of water let alone a sea, but we will remember him nonetheless.