I thought Granny and Tweety and Sylvester were just the greatest. Do y'all remember Sylvester? Sylvester was the great big "putty" cat; the one who was all white-and-black all over. Every Saturday he tried and tried to catch the Tweety Bird for dinner, but he never could. 

One Saturday something different happened. Sylvester died, but he came back. And then it happened again. And again. And each time Sylvester died, he came right back. Eight times it happened. I didn't understand. I asked my dad about it, and he smiled. "A cat has nine lives, Celia," he said.

I'm eighteen now, and I don't get up to watch cartoons on Saturday mornings anymore. I haven't thought about Granny or Tweety or Sylvester in a long time. But I did the other day. I was in a friend's room, and right smack in the middle of her bed were lying two figures. One was a stuffed Tweety Bird, and the other was a stuffed Sylvester. I got to thinking about Sylvester and cats--and their nine lives. And then I started thinking about me and a girl named Tonya and our one life.

During the summers before my sophomore and senior years, I worked at a South Carolina institution for the mentally retarded. My first summer I worked in education with mostly retarded teenagers. On my first day I noticed a girl lying on a big red bean-bag. She was bone-thin with tiny blue shorts and tight braids. Her body was curled into a fetal positon, and her mouth hung open. Her eyes stared, unseeing, at some place before her.

The supervisor near her spoke in low tones. "This is Tonya," she told me. "Tonya wasn't born retarded. She and a twin brother were both born healthy, but their mother was abusive. She killed Tanya's brother when they were three, and she hit Tanya over the head. We don't know what she hit Tanya with for sure, but we think it was a hot iron."

The supervisor walked over to the small girl and rested a hand on her head. "Look at this," she whispered, motioning for me to look. I looked, and then I wished I hadn't. In the back of Tanya's head, where hair should be growing, I saw a hole a little larger than a quarter. It was round, pink, deep, and scarred-over.

"How old is she?" I asked.

"Seventeen" the lady told me.

Seventeen. I looked at the shrunken girl before me. Seventeen. Two years older than I was. I though of all the things I wanted to do by the time I was seventeen. And I thought of all the things Tonya would never be able to do. I looked at her, but she didn't look at me. She couldn't hear me, and her eyes didn't seem to see me. They stared at the same place before her at something I couldn't see.

None of us is Tonya, but many of us are similar because we "live" lives that are never really lived. I see life as one of those great big presents wrapped-up all pretty and set under the Christmas tree. I get so excited just looking at those presents, turning them upside down, and trying to guess what's inside. But I can't really start enjoying the present until it's unwrapped.

God has given each of us a present much greater than the ones wrapped under the Christmas tree. It's the gift of life. In John 14:6 Jesus tells us that He is "the way, the truth, and the life." He says that He has come that we might have life and that we might have it to the fullest (John 10:10).

I think that life without Jesus is like a great big present all wrapped up. It's wonderful to look at, but you can only guess at what's inside until you open it. Opening it means making yourself vulnerable to Jesus and allowing Him to take control of your life.

Sylvester the Cat was given nine lives. But he spent each one just the same as the last. He spent each one trying to catch the Tweety Bird for dinner.

Like Tonya, we have been given only one life. If we don't use our one life wisely, we don't get to come back and do it all over again like Sylvester. This is it, so we need to go out into the world and try to make the most of what we have been given. I believe the way to do that is through a relationship with Jesus Christ.