The cat in the paper box

I was thinking about the cat in the paper box today.  How I dreged up that memory I've no idea. 

Year ago there were dot matrix printers and these arcaich machines used what was called fan folded paper and feed through the printer either via pressure rollers or by track feeders.  If you've no idea what I'm talking about it's ok.  Just read on.

Fred (brother) had a worry one day.  His printer refused to print!  It printed fine in the morning, but now, around 3 pm it wouldn't do anything.  No error lights on the front panel, ink ribbon had recently been changed, the strangest thing was that the paper would move only slightly when told to print something.

We looked at it and thought about it for a bit.  Replaced the drivers, replaced the ribbon, checked the feed path.  Nothing!  Everything was in order.  No reason in the world this bloody damned thing shouldn't be printing.  Yes, we'd got to cussing at that point. 

We must have worked on that silly printer for over 3 hours trying to figure out what the problem could possibly be. 

Then all became clear with a slight sound of movement and the appearance of a cat's head coming out of the the paper box yawning. 

Apparently, we'd disturbed the beast in it's slumber with our tugging on the paper to see why it wouldn't feed up to the printer.

We were relieved, mortified, angry and feeling very, very foolish about the whole deal.

After thinking about this story from my distant past it occured to me that we do a lot of that in our lives. 

Something that has worked for us before suddenly stops working.  We of course want to fix it and know what happened!  We look all over the place for the answers and get more and more frustrated with things the more we try. 

This can throw us all out of whack with things.  We look and look and then even start blaming others.  What a piece of junk!  Who sells this thing?  There ought to be a law I tell ya!  Damned corperations!  Who can I shoot?  And on and on.

All that anger is actually coming from our fears.  Yet we look at those last of all.  Did I connect that cable right?  Maybe in the last 3 things we tried I forgot something.  Did I get a virus?  Did I download something bad?  Is God punishing me? 

There are times.  Many times!  We need to just relax, realize there is not one thing I can do about this just now.  And leave it alone!  Give it time and see what comes up.  I know that's hard to do.  When we see a problem or what we think is a problem it is common to want to fix it.

I'd guess a good bit of the time we need only ask for God and then do nothing and then leave it alone.  Allow God to do his thing and fix it for us. 

You may think that dealing with a cat in a paper box is something too small to concern God.  Yet the more we tried to fix it ourselves the worse we made things for ourselves.  More anger, more fustration, more angst over nothing.

But we are spiritual beings temporarily here in the physical world.  We're just passing though and learning what we need to in order to grow up one day.



That being the case, why would God be too small or have anything beneath his mighty dignity to resolve for us?  He sent his son to be degraded, mocked, tortured and killed.  So...what's beneath God?  A printer problem?  I think not.

He helps us (when we let him) to deal with the real Lessons, not the world.  We need to learn the real things from the false and let the world go with God and his will.  Pick up the lesson and leave the rest.  It doesn't matter.

Only the soul matters in the end.

And if you happen to be one of the few folks who still has a dot matrix printer and it suddenly stops working.  Be sure to check the paper box for cats or the like.  :)

Be well.