My Favourite Stories #2

This story was told to me by Gottfried Oosterwal who got the story first-hand while in Romania in the late 1980’s.

In the 1960s when the Ceausescu (Chichesku?) regime ruled Communist Romania, a Pastor was arrested and tortured for his faith and instructed to sign a document indicating that he no longer believed in God or Jesus and was renouncing his faith. He Refused. Subsequent bad treatment still produced no result. The police officer therefore indicated that he would be locked up for a week without food in a tiny cell.
They marched the Pastor off down the corridor, opened the cell door and thrust him in, with the words, “We’ll see how you feel about it after a week of being in here.” The cell was the size of an Australian toilet, with not even enough room to lie out flat and sleep. There was one bucket of water, and one barred window high up on the wall, and a light that never went out. The Pastor sat on the floor and prayed for the strength to endure this ordeal.

If you ever thought the story of Elijah being fed by the Raven was just an Old Testament story that has no place in this age, let me tell you that everyday there appeared in the window high above the cell a cat with a large piece of bread in its mouth, which he dropped into the cell. The Pastor would pick up the bread and eat every morsel, except for the damp piece that had been in the cat’s mouth, which he placed in the corner of the cell. This happened every day. The cat would appear in the window, drop the bread, and disappear.

It was the Pastors habit to sing hymns of praise in Romanian every day. At weeks end, there was heard the marching of boots and as they neared the cell, they heard the singing and the police sergeant said to the others, “This does not sound like what we were expecting.” As they opened the door, there was the Pastor, full of life, looking healthy and fit. The Police sergeant expressed his surprise, to which the Pastor recounted how God had fed him everyday with a cat delivering a thick slice of beautiful bread. Of course, the sergeant said this was non-sense. The Pastor showed him the little bits of crust – all seven of them. Still the sergeant scoffed. Then suddenly the cat appeared in the window with a slice of bread in its mouth which it proceeded to drop into the cell.

The police sergeant looked up in disbelief and exclaimed, “That’s my cat!”

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