I ease back into my recliner, raise the leg rest, and settle down to enjoy a periodical, when out of the corner of my eye, a blur flashes across the doorway in the next room. I look up to see my tomcat in hot pursuit. 

            “Way to go, cat!” I say to myself.

            A few seconds later, two mice quickly dart through the doorway and aim for the far corner of the living room.  Like tennis balls, they bounce back into the room and end up in front of my chair.

            “Aha!” I say to myself as I fold the recliner and sit up. “They visited my home once before, but they didn’t know I plugged the holes when I remodeled.  It serves them right for intruding into my home and making me feel dirty.”

            The cat runs into the room and skids to a stop behind the shaking couple.  He turns and slowly approaches the mice with an air of triumph. I see his eyes full of hungry greed as he prepares to gulp the pesky varmints down.

            At a glance, I take in the scene before me. Shaking with fear, the female mouse clings to her husband, quietly hoping he can figure a way to save them.  He looks up at me.  Out of breath from the run, and with no place else to go, his pleading eyes scream loudly for help.

            I decide to intervene.  I lean over from my chair and scoop them up in my hands.   Disappointment covers the cat’s face, while solitude fills the mice now resting on my lap. 

            I look down at them.  Their ruffled fur drips with sweat. They seem pretty tame as they now rely on me for survival.  My mind thinks back to all I ever heard about mice. They carry diseases, chew holes in my walls and floors, make messes in my cupboards, and eat my food.

            “What am I doing?” I say to myself. “Why should I interfere with the natural order of selection? Cats are supposed to eat mice.”

            I decide the female mouse should go first.  She may not bear the agony of seeing her husband go as easily as he would to see her go.  I reach down and grab her. She squeals and desperately clings to my pants leg with her tiny claws.  I jerk my hand hard and rip her free from my pants leg. I toss her to the floor, where the cat snatches her up in his crushing jaws.

            The husband’s crestfallen face expresses a loss of all hope.  He hangs his head in deep brokenhearted sorrow.  Why did I do such a thing? 

            “Oh, well” I excuse myself.  I can’t reverse the damage. I better put him out of his misery, too.  I quickly hand him to the cat.

             I slowly arouse out of my groggy slumber.  What a rotten dream.  For the next few hours, I ponder over and over in my mind the different aspects of the dream. What could I have done differently?  What if the mice belonged to someone else as pets?  They did seem tame.  Why did I act so impulsively, only to regret the decisions I made. It was only a dream, but these ponderings do little to ease my mind.

            Later, I share the dream with my wife.  Overhearing the story, my oldest son agonizes over it for a good part of the day, troubled that two living creatures knit together in the love of matrimony would meet their demise in such a cruel fashion.

            Over many days, I contemplate the dream from many angles, seeking some spiritual significance or application. I conclude the dream contained two moral and ethical dilemmas we face in society. One, we often feel more compunction for mistreated mice and other lowly creatures, than we do for the unborn child whose life gets snuffed out by the very ones they look to for safety and nurturing.  Why no outcry from decent people over the terrible injustice that goes on in our communities? As a society, we sit by and hand our innocent, helpless, weak, and defenseless unborn children to the greedy hunger of the abortion doctors, propelled by bitter feminists bent on eliminating the sleepless drudgery and slavery of motherhood.  In our selfishness, we do not want pesky children dirtying up our houses, tearing holes in our walls, eating our food, wearing out our furniture, and disturbing our tranquil lifestyles. They carry germs and diseases. Why allow them the freedoms and comforts of our lives?  Why not let the natural order of selections take place?  If society wants to feed off of unborn children, why not just sit by and let it happen? 

            Secondly, God’s marriage decrees often fall prey to society’s whims. How come society cannot defend and protect the sanctity of marriage?  Too many meddle in the marriage of others.  Fornicators and adulterers weaken the seriousness of wedding vows hoping to justify their lustful pinings, jealousies, or self-centered interests. Books, movies, radio programs, newspapers, public officials, and other media often belittle, impugn, and trash the institution of marriage.  More and more, people embrace the attitude, “Who needs to get married?” or “Why stay married until ‘death do us part’?”  And if adultery and fornication do not assault marriage enough, “men with men” (as King James puts it) want to gain acceptance of their behavior by associating it with the sacred honor of “one man, one woman”.  Now pet owners wanton toward their dogs and cats oppose God’s edict against bestiality.

            Sadly our society will emerge from its dreamy slumber only to realize the nightmarish reality of liquidated human lives and destroyed marriages.  No society can sustain growth when it prevents the birth of children and destroys the matrimony that holds families together.  Do we find ourselves guilty of destroying the lives of innocent children and tampering with sacred marriages?  If so, perhaps we hold more compassion for mice, then we do for families and children.

-Norman