I used to have a dog. I have some great pictures of her, but don't know how to get photos into my blog, so use your imagination. (Sorry, I'm just helpless when it comes to things technical.)
Her name was Sage and she was an unusually beautiful chocolate lab. Beautiul, sweet face, long-legged, with a perfect shape; big chest and tiny waist. She never lost her enviable figure and continued to be beautiful until the day she died. I had her for 13 years.
When my husband died (close to 9 years ago), I was desolate. We had been a very close couple and I was suddenly without my other half. How does half of anything work?
I lived alone, which I had not done for over 30 years. It was very lonely, but sharing this lonely time with me was my dog. She followed me always from room to room, just content to be near me.
Although she had been a special gift for my husband, I was the one with whom she truly bonded. I bought her for my husband, but God meant her for me. He knew that in 5 years I would be alone, so he, in his tender, fatherly love, provided me with a warm, sweet creature to share my solitude and comfort me. In the early days of my widowhood, when I wept nearly to the point of physical dehydration, tears streaming down my face for hours at a time, in my aloneness, she sat, pressed against me, looking at me with her sad eyes, licking the tears from my face.
I still miss her. I held her as she was put to sleep last year, because of rapidly increasing problems of aging - arthritis, back problems, terrible balance, and encroaching blindness. She died, never having had a sad day. That was better, I thought, than waiting to see how long she could live...
I actually learned some important things from Sage. She was a living, breathing object lesson in motion.
A few years ago we were out for an afternoon walk. It was a beautiful, bright blue day! The wild blackberries were bursting out all along the path we walked together by a stream. Oak trees made a thick, green canopy over the walkway, so the sun shone through in some places, but there was a lot of shade. Even on a hot day, this was a lovely place to walk - and it was just a half a block from where I lived, in a tiny apartment up over the kitchen of a very old church.
[I always used a telescoping leash - one that would give her about 16 feet of room, but I could crank her back in whenever I decided to. It was fun for both of us, if she would have a little freedom during our walks together. She was a big dog and needed room to explore.]
On this particular day, she had been even more eager than usual to explore, run for short bursts, and poke her nose into things that interested her. There was a very negative side to this freedom thing...
Lovely as she was, even so, she seemed most attracted to things that I didn't want her to get into. Sometimes she would eat things that were really disgusting. I won't list them. She went places that were strewn with various types of vile smelling "organic matter," which she would step in, and the odors would linger on her, even after she was no longer walking in them. On this day she got tangled in the blackberry vines way down the embankment. (She loved blackberries, and would eat them right off the vines as we walked). It was difficult to get her untangled. Hiking down the slope that led to the creek, I stumbled my way down to her, to help her get loose from the thorny trap. Quite a production! Stepping in organic matter which I could not, and would not want to, identify, fervently wishing I hadn't decided to wear sandals, I began the task of getting her free of this sweet-tasting snare that had captured her. We were both a smelly, scratched mess by the time I got her back up on the path, this time ON A SHORT LEASH.
Walking back home, with her pulled closely to my side, I pondered the metaphoric qualities of our experience. I'm really a lot like my dog, I thought to myself. I need to be kept very close to Jesus, or I become ensnared by the attractions of the world, and must be rescued.
Throughout the book of Judges, this same scene is played over and over again. We know we need to be in God's Word daily. We know we need to stay close to God. But we are continuously attracted to ideas, attitudes, experiences, and all manner of "stuff" that pulls us away from the God we know we need to love and obey. We "do what is evil in the sight of the Lord." So, we are just like my dog, and just like those nasty Israelites, needing to be rescued from ourselves.
I know that I need to be on a short leash with God. But sometimes I become distracted and tug at that leash, pulling away from that which is my only safety. It's my "human nature," (such a grand-sounding euphymism for my flesh). And so, God gives me some "room" and I never use that room to read my Bible more, or pray more, or meditate wholeheartedly on the perfection of God. No, I will use valuable time, instead, to check out what's on sale at Kohl's, or spend hours (How can that be?) on Facebook, or watch worthless things on TV. Filling my mind with things that don't matter. Idols.
The one I really do love is God. And yet, how unfaithful I am to him, over and over again....yanking against the loving leash of his Word, so I can engage in easier, less challenging thought. The older I get, the lazier I seem to be!
Echoing the Apostle Paul's rant: "So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil llies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging WAR against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members." -Rom. 7:21-23.
Oh, help me, my God. Rescue me from the snares "that so easily entangle" me. Help me to love you and obey you and serve you in holiness of motive and worship! I don't want to continue to step in things, stinking from the lingering smell of wickedness. Deliver me from things that would pull me from your side.
Oh, the greatness of our God, for reconciling us to Himself through the death of his Son! (Rom. 5:10) He did this "while we were yet sinners." WHILE, not after we were all cleaned-up. Amazing grace indeed.
So, nasty as I still am, you continue to pull me close to your side, and continue sanctifying me through my failures, my idolatries, my pain. The contrast between us is ridiculous. Your total perfection, beauty, holiness, faithfulness, gracious redemption. My depravity, my stiff-necked rebellion, arrogant pride, worldly affections and laziness, preferring things that are easy, not holy....Quite a contrast. It illustrates just how totally in need of grace I am. I cannot behave my way to righteousness. (though I seem to think that I need to do that.) But, you, my generous and loving God, have imputed the righteousness of your perfect son, Jesus....to Me! Me, the vile one; Me, the arrogant one; Me, the lazy one; Me, the idolatrous one. Such grace is too wonderful for words.
"I love you, O LORD, my strength. The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies." Ps 18:1-3
Please, dear God, keep me on a short leash..........
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