Jesus said, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work." (4:34Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.John 4:34)

Our cat made me think of that verse this morning.

Every night when we go to bed, we close the cat out of the bedroom, because if we don't, he spends the night walking back and forth across me, and I don't get a whole lot of sleep.

The consequence is that, by morning, Pumpkin is pretty much starved for human affection and attention. As soon as I get out of bed, he immediately starts pawing at the other side of the bedroom door, as if to say, "Let me in! Let me in!" And then, when I exit the bedroom, he lets out a little yowl of happiness, and follows me everywhere I go.

Now the other part of this story involves the cat's food dish. Pumpkin has figured out that I won't give him more food until he has finished what's in his bowl. But for some reason he's always more eager to have "new" food than to finish what is left in his bowl from the previous night.

So the cat has a terrible dilemma. On the one hand, he wants to be with me wherever I go, but on the other hand, he wants to finish what's left in his food dish so he can have more.

So how do you suppose he resolves this little conflict of interests? Simple! He hangs out with me wherever I go, and then, when I happen to go into the kitchen, he'll go straight to his food dish and wolf down a few more morsels of food, hoping that he can finish his food before I leave the kitchen. Then when I go back to the living room, he follows me, leaving behind his food until the next time I go into the kitchen.

Sometimes it takes him a couple hours to finish that last little bit of food.

But I thought it was interesting that, for the cat, hanging out with me was more important than getting more food.

It made me think of Jesus.

My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work.

"I'd rather be doing God's work than eating!"

Lord, may this be true of us, that we'd rather be spending time with you, spending our lives on your work, than on any other endeavor!