Today’s devotional is a bit hard to work into a spiritual application. However, I couldn’t let this day pass and I will get to a spiritual application. Bear with me, though, as I set this up.
In 1976, a cartoonist named Jim Davis started a strip that was known only to local newspapers. On June 19, 1978, the strip went into syndication and the world was introduced to a fat, lazy, sassy, lasagna loving cat named Garfield. His human is an affable but geeky fellow named Jon Arbuckle. Soon in the strip, we are introduced to Odie, a naïve, slobbering beagle who is a bit dense and suffers the brunt of Garfield’s jokes. Jon’s love interest, the veterinarian named Dr. Liz Wilson, comes on the scene a year later.
Then, there is Nermal, a cute, chubby kitten who vies to be the center of attention. Arlene is Garfield’s love interest, his official girlfriend. She is a pink cat with a big gap between her teeth. Finally, there is Squeak, a mouse befriended by Garfield and protected even though Jon freaks out every time he sees it and wants Garfield to act like a cat and handle the mouse.
The setting for the cartoon is Muncie, Indiana, Davis’s hometown. A graduate of Ball State University, Davis not only manages his cartoon strip produced under his Paws, Inc. company but he employs 50 artists who work with the Garfield franchise and all the licensing and entertainment empire it has created. He is also an adjunct professor at his alma mater.
Today is National Garfield The Cat Day. This is a day my dad would have found enjoyable to “celebrate.”
I use the word celebrate loosely. Dad was a quiet, reserved man. We often joked that you wouldn’t know if he was enjoying something. His face seldom showed it and when it did, the evidence was minimal. I doubted his pulse rate ever changed. 
However, each Christmas, dad would receive a gift that was special. A publisher put a year’s worth of Garfield comics together in one book and it went into print. These books included the weekend additions of the comic that were in color. This was typically a stocking stuffer for dad. When he opened his books, he immediately started reading them, chuckling through Garfield’s antics, and nearly oblivious to anything going on around him.
Dad was a simple man and remembering him enjoying the simple pleasures in life is a joy to me. It brings a smile to my face and makes me want more of those kinds of days with him. Our problem is that we typically don’t realize what we had until it’s gone. This seems to be a heartache we all share.
Consider these reminders God has given us. Ecclesiastes 2:24 says, “There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God.” Ecclesiastes 8:15 has a similar thought. “Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: for that shall abide with him of his labour the days of his life, which God giveth him under the sun.”
The summation of this thought is found in 1 Timothy 6:17. Paul told Timothy, “Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy.”
Do you find joy in the simple things of life? Today, remind yourself of James 1:17. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”
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