This is Molly Moira, she’s the momma cat who should know better to pick on baby bunnies.
I’ve really been struggling with my writing these past few weeks. I’m sure any regular followers I have noticed. I’m a quiet and shy person by nature and I still sometimes struggle with my introverted ways. My life is fairly normal, in fact perhaps a bit boring by today’s standards. The biggest accomplishment I’ve had lately is that we got the garden planted and everything is growing nicely. I lost some honeydew melon plants to the bunnies and I’m really hoping they leave my green beans alone this year. I’ve yet to harvest green beans from my own garden due to the appetite of the bunnies.
We have also managed to save a few baby bunnies and one baby bird that our cats found out. Momma bunnies who build their burrows in my front yard should be turned into Child Protective Services. I spotted the babies last week as I was scoping out small branches and twigs to start a little fire in my chiminea. The weather here has been a bit cool, so a nice fire out on the front porch seemed nice. As I bent down to retrieve a branch there were two sets of eyes staring up at me. I startled a bit and took a second look to find two baby bunnies watching me from their hole. I admonished their momma bunny and went back to making my fire. A little later one of my cats found them. I swooped in and rescued the baby but only to have the other cat drag another baby from the burrow. This one hid out in my garage until Cliff managed to rescue her. We took that cats in, I checked the burrow and found it empty the next day and figured it was safe. I didn’t realize that they would come back. The next night I heard the baby bunny crying as my Ellie Cat carried her away to under our back deck. Super Emma to the rescue! She dove under the deck and shooed the cat away. Baby bunny was okay, but scared. It was then that Super Emma became girlie Emma and was afraid to pick her up. She didn’t want to get bit. I assured her that she would be fine. Emma scooped her up and crawled out. I had the baby cupped in my hands, Emma and her friend, Ben, ooohing and awing over her cute bunny sweetness. Suddenly I noticed a warm sensation in my hands. That baby was pretty scared and let it out the only way it knew. It pee’d in my hands. With every ounce of self control I could muster I didn’t drop her or scream or anything. I tried holding her out to let it have a clearer path to the ground to tinkle, but then discovered she was a he and he could shoot a pretty good stream for a baby bunny. I promptly put him back into his hole and ran into the house to wash. ”Turn on the water and load my hands with soap!” I told Cliff. He’s a good man and just did as he was told, asking why as I was scrubbing. ”A baby bunny just pee’d on me!” His one word response said it all, “Eww.” I washed up and coated my hands with some tea tree oil to kill bunny pee germs and for the rest of the evening I suffered from the ghost sensation of bunny pee on my hands. When I told my in-laws about it, my father in law offered, “Well, not too many people can say they had a baby bunny pee on them.” I guess it is some kind of small accomplishment!
The cats spent the next two and a half days in the house, I checked the borrow each day and it’s still empty. I think the momma moved out. The cats didn’t do well with being grounded, in fact, Molly gets downright grumpy and poor Ellie took the brunt of her mood. There was much yowling and hissing going on every time she or our dog, Bingo came near her. By day three Molly seemed to have given up on outside and preferred to stay in with a bowl of milk at first. She and Ellie are getting older, even when they’re outside we often find them curled up out there, close to the house, fast asleep.
Eleanore Catherine aka Ellie Cat who seems like a sweet and delicate pacifist. She handles being grounded much better than her momma cat since her favorite place to be is on my bed anyway.
I’ve been continuing with the chronological reading plan through the Bible that the church we attend is doing. Right now we just finished up Proverbs and we’re reading about Solomon’s downfall. You see, God promised Solomon’s father, King David, that if he followed Him, one of David’s heirs would sit on the throne of Israel forever. David, though sinful and flawed (check into what happened with Bathsheba) was a “man after God’s own heart”. David turned to God, he repented and sought God’s forgiveness and never stopped worshipping the One True God. So, God made him a promise and David’s son, Solomon became king after David died.
God spoke with Solomon, like audibly, and told Solomon that He’d give him what ever he asked for. Solomon wisely asked for wisdom. What king doesn’t need wisdom. Solomon wanted to be a good king, he needed wisdom to do so. Solomon was known for his riches, but mostly for his wisdom that was world renowned. The queen of Sheba heard about his wealth and his wisdom and came to check it out for herself. The Bible says she asked Solomon all sorts of questions about many things and he had the answer for them all. She left saying that the rumors she’d heard of Solomon’s wisdom were true.
“She exclaimed to the king, “Everything I heard in my country about your achievements and wisdom is true! I didn’t believe what was said until I arrived here and saw it with my own eyes. In fact, I had not heard the half of it! Your wisdom and prosperity are far beyond what I was told. How happy your people must be! What a privilege for your officials to stand here day after day, listening to your wisdom! Praise the Lord your God, who delights in you and has placed you on the throne of Israel. Because of the Lord’s eternal love for Israel, he has made you king so you can rule with justice and righteousness.” 1 Kings 10: 6-9
In 1 Kings the account goes from the queens visit and Solomon’s wealth to Solomon’s many wives. He married over 700 women, mostly royalty from other countries, like Pharaoh’s daughter from Egypt. God had told Israel that they weren’t to take foreign wives. Foreign wives would turn their hearts from the One True God. Solomon ignored this law over and over and married foreign women and when he was an old man, Solomon turned away from the God that gave him wisdom and began worshiping false gods, the gods of his many wives. This was not just the downfall of Solomon, but the beginning of the downfall of Israel.
“Now King Solomon loved many foreign women. Besides Pharaoh’s daughter, he married women from Moab, Ammon, Edom, Sidon, and from among the Hittites. The Lord had clearly instructed the people of Israel, ‘You must not marry them, because they will turn your hearts to their gods.’ Yet Solomon insisted on loving them anyway. He had 700 wives of royal birth and 300 concubines. And in fact, they did turn his heart away from the Lord. In Solomon’s old age, they turned his heart to worship other gods instead of being completely faithful to the Lord his God, as his father, David, had been. Solomon worshiped Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molech, the detestable god of the Ammonites. In this way, Solomon did what was evil in the Lord’s sight; he refused to follow theLord completely, as his father, David, had done.” 1 Kings 11: 1-6“
Up to this point Israel was a super power, but God was so angry at Solomon for sinning so greatly that he brought up an adversary against Solomon and promised him 10 of the tribes of Israel after Solomon’s death. Solomon’s son, Rahoboam was to rule over one tribe, Judah. God gave Judah and Jerusalem to Rahoboam to rule to honor Rahoboam’s grandfather, King David. After the death of Solomon the kingdom of Israel was divided and was never the same.
The list of kings of Israel and Judah is found in the books of 1 and 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles. Each king is introduced and we’re told they were either men who loved God and followed His ways or men who did what was evil in the sight of God and followed false gods. The number of godly kings is smaller than the later. In Israel especially the kings turned away from God and followed false gods and eventually Israel and then later Judah were taken into exile by Persia, Assyria and Babylon. God kept sending prophets to tell them to turn back to Him, that He would be their God, that if they would only follow Him, He would provide and protect and He would guide them, but over and over the prophets were ignored and killed. God had to do something to get them to repent and the exiles did just that, but Israel was never the same.
Today, no one remembers Israel as a world super power. They’ve picked themselves up and dusted themselves off so many times in their history and today they are a political state and not a godly state. Solomon was given everything! He was given wealth, wisdom and peace, but he turned away form the God who gave it all to him and he led his country into ruin because of it. When we look at our lives, can’t we all see times when we were given blessings and when all was right in our world, we forgot God? Then our lives would get tipped upside down and we’d be thrown into exile somewhere and then we’d cry out to God, “Where are you?” You know what His answer is? ”Right here, all along, waiting for you to come back to Me.” just as He did with Israel over and over again.
If nothing else, if my life means nothing more than coming back to my Creator and Savior over and over, and a few baby bunnies get rescued in the meantime, my life is filled with more blessings than I can count and my wish, my desire, my hope and prayer is that I never do what Solomon did and turn away from the God who gave me those blessings.
