SAFE IN THE ARMS

If kittens could talk, this one might have quite a tale (notice I wrote tale, not tail). This winter some relatives noticed a stray cat shivering at their back patio sliders. Taking her to a vet, they learned she not only had a tapeworm but was pregnant. Before long she gave birth to a half dozen kittens, one deceased. Another, already dead, came later. (Poor Mama Cat!) We finally met the Meow Tribe a few months later when they'd been weaned and potty-box-trained (more or less) and would soon be adopted out.

I hadn't been around kittens for years. They are light as a feather and bounce around like autumn leaves on a blustery day. But they also will sit still for some lovin'--as in this photo I got of one that my husband held. I like this photo because is says “protected” and “safe” to me. It also reminds me of scriptures that express God's attributes to us in human terms.

Isaiah 41:10 portrays God's promise to help us in the image of his strong hand:

I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

Isaiah 63:3, expressing God's desire for His people to have a fresh, holy, and God-honoring reputation:

You will be a crown of splendor in the Lord's hand, a royal diadem in the hand of God.

In John 10:28-29, Jesus used the metaphor of God's hand to express eternal security for true believers:

I give them [His followers] eternal life and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand; My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand.

And of course, the Gospels give us the tender picture of Jesus welcoming children to His lap, laying His hands on them and blessing them (Mark 10:16).

Besides those scriptures, the tiny kitten in my husband's hands reminded me of a hymn of yesteryear with a poignant story behind it. The hymn is “Safe in the Arms of Jesus,”written in 1868 by Fanny Crosby, prolific hymn-lyric-writer who was blinded in infancy and lived to her 90s. One little-known fact of her life is that after she married another blind person (whom she met at her school for the blind), she became pregnant. But the child—reportedly a little girl—died shortly after birth. Fanny would carry that sorrow close to her heart for the rest of her life. But she also penned the words that would comfort untold numbers who needed to feel themselves wrapped in the arms of God:

Safe in the arms of Jesus, Safe on His gentle breast,

There by His love o'ershadowed, sweetly my soul shall rest.

Hark! 'tis the voice of angels, borne in a song to me,

Over the fields of glory, over the jasper sea.

The last verse ends:

Here let me wait with patience, wait till the night is o'er;

Wait till I see the morning break on the golden shore.

Sometime, somewhere, somehow, all our lives will be marked by times of difficult parting. Of letting go. Death, disappointments, lost opportunities, fading health—all enter this fragile place called “life.” But the end of the story will come, someday. We'll find ourselves gently spilled out of the rough earthly hands that cupped us, and led by a celestial hand as we walk wide-eyed into Heaven's royal banquet hall.

This YouTube chorus video with scenery and hymn text features Mrs Crosby's tender hymn:

Safe in the Arms of Jesus - Bing video