Friend to the Friendless

This is Olive.  Like me, she enjoys a good book, especially if there are illustrations.

Olive was dumped off on our property about 17 years ago as a thin, vocal young cat with one hazy eye.  She was in a tree and wouldn't come down until I got a ladder and plucked her off the bark and onto my lined flannel coat.

Since then, Olive treasures staying in the house and napping.  It's all she's ever done.  Unlike the other cats, she never has been attracted to outside living, which doesn't stop her from expressing her opinion about it as well as other subjects in her rather annoying meow.

When people say they don't like cats, it's usually because they've only encountered cats like Olive.  There have been a lot of cats come and go in the seventeen years Olive has lived here on the Gold Coast (you don't want to know how many) and most of them didn't/don't like Olive either.

Except Dooley.

Dooley.  My perfect cat.  He is nice to Olive.  He would be nice to the other cats too, but they want to beat him up.  I suspect it is because he is nice to Olive.  Or maybe because I think Dooley can do no wrong.

We talk a lot about bullying these days.  Bullying is more easily identified among the tween to college set.  With social media, kids shame each other for any random and involuntary trait/comment/outfit/thought/friend/etc.  But adults have their own way of pressuring conformity and group think.  While some people do "hate", often the ones who call out "haters" are their own kind of hater and bully. 

Tough times.  It's hard to look at truth and then stand by it and be its friend.  It likely will be called lots of names that are ugly and within a growing consensus of agreement.  It doesn't make truth less truth-y. 

Truth is also love.  And Jesus told us to love - to be friends to the friendless.  Giving up love for truth is wrong just as giving up truth for a different definition of love is also wrong.  The best way to know the difference is to cling to God. Pick up Jesus' words and look at them.  Study them, practice them.

Then, step out and live what Jesus lived.  Go find the Olive in your office, in your family, or even just in the back pew of the church, and be their friend, even if they squawk and have unusual habits.  That doesn't make them less valuable, particularly to our Father.