O.K., get your hankies out, I know I’m going to tug at a few heart strings, even my own, but I want to talk to you about some some spiritual lessons that we can learn from dogs, you know, those four footed critters that work their way into our hearts.
This silly dog that I have now, an American Bulldog, loves to play ball. I’ve told you about that before. He has a rather chewed tennis ball and a larger green rubber ball, made for dogs, that lights up in the dark in the night. It’s like those toys we used to get as kids that, when placed near a light, would soak up the rays and then glow in the dark. Now, it doesn’t bounce as well as the tennis ball, but he loves to play with it just the same. And he’s gotten pretty good at it. He’s become one of those “air-dogs” that jumps up and catches the ball in the air. This game gets him all excited and that tail just goes a wagging. It’s the same tail that acts as a drum stick when he wakes up in the morning and beats the closet door next to where he sleeps. Come nap time, I invite him in to sleep with me, but he has his own big, fluffy, pillow bed that he sleeps on, one in our bedroom and one in the kitchen, but it’s his. He’s also one of these “teflon” dogs. He hangs around me no matter what I’m doing, so long as he is in the house and not out in the backyard playing ball. And I don’t chase the ball, he does. But he scampers for it almost as soon as I open the back door and brings it to me. When I mow the yard, he knows that it’s time to jump up on the back porch swing so I can leash him to the swing, otherwise he likes to chase the mower. Dumb dog. But, he’s teflon and likes to hang with me. Now here is the spiritual lesson. Jesus, in His parable of the talents, talents here meaning money that had been given to a servant, said to the servant who had been faithful in using his gift to multiply it into something more than he had been given, told him, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little, I will make you faithful over much.” My pooch dog is faithful to hang by my side, no matter where I am. I wonder if we are just as faithful to hang with the Lord, no matter what we are going through?
Tearful yet? You will be in a moment. The dog I had before this one, well, to put it bluntly, found me before I found her. This was when I was pastoring the First Baptist Church of Donie. On this particular day, we had the whole family down for hot dogs and chili, back in the day when I wasn’t so conscious about my weight. Myself and a few of the grandkids were out on the front porch of the parsonage enjoying our meals when this skinny, rather hungry, Heins-57 hound dog came very shyly creeping up to our porch. Evidently no one had fed her much within the past few days or weeks, and she was looking for kindness and a hand out. Well, needlessly to say, one look at her and I was hooked. Question was, was she going to be hooked on me? Well, after that first chili dog, there was another, and then another one after that, and all scarfed down within a few seconds. At that point, I could tell she was hitchin’ up with me. I told my grandson to go in and get a few more chili dogs, and they didn’t last very long either. Then just a plane ole hot dog without the chili or just the weenie by itself was all that was needed. After seven of those “goodies”, I had me a dog and she had her human! My Dad used to say, “Mark, she is your dog all right! She won’t go to anyone else.”
