Cat's In The Cradle

Jesus said to his disciples: “A little while and you will no longer see me, and again a little while later and you will see me.” 

So some of his disciples said to one another, “What does this mean that he is saying to us, ‘A little while and you will not see me, and again a little while and you will see me,’ and ‘Because I am going to the Father’ So they said, “What is this ‘little while’ of which he speaks? We do not know what he means.”

Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him, so he said to them, “Are you discussing with one another what I said, ‘A little while and you will not see me, and again a little while and you will see me’? Amen, amen, I say to you, you will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices; you will grieve, but your grief will become joy.” (John 16:16-20)

I remember when my two sons were little, and they’d ask, “When are we going to the beach?”   My usual reply was, “In a little while.”   Or, “Come out to play.”  Reply: “In a little while.”  I wager most parents had and have a similar approach to deflecting those sorts of questions and toddler pressure.  Whenever I hear “Cat’s In The Cradle” by Harry Chapin (1974), I think of that response: “In a little while.”  Some of those sobering lyrics are:

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon 
Little boy blue and the man in the moon
"When you coming home, dad?" "I don't know when"
But we'll get together then
You know we'll have a good time then.

John tells us Jesus said, “In a little while.”  His disciples asked what that meant.  We ask the same question.  We still wait for his return, but I wager we’ll all die before that happens.  Many previous generations that are long gone waited, and “in a little while” was “not yet.”  Does it really matter?

What’s most important is for Jesus to come alive – to come again – through our actions.  People see him in us when we mirror him through care and compassion and certainly through forgiveness.  These actions help people weep and mourn no more – to have their grief become joy.   "In a little while" becomes "Now."

Deacon David Pierce