Puppy Love

"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.         John 15:12-13

That is me and my pal - Asbury. It is hard to find a greater love on this earth than the love a dog gives its owner. My dog is never in a bad mood, never snaps at me needlessly, never talks back, and never fails to run around in excited circles and leaps when I come home. He is my first welcome after a long hard day.


Today my daughter and I decided to walk around the neighborhood and because she had already taken Asbury on a walk, we left him behind - he is 14 after all.  He soon made it apparent that this was not an appropriate arrangement as he ran back and forth yelping and barking and begging to join us. I should add that he has a wireless fence system which will deliver a mild shock if he ventures too far from our home. (Two good reasons for this: 1 - he eats cats and all our neighbors have cats! 2- he's kind of dumb and tends to run into traffic)


As we came down the road on our second lap around I noticed that he was quiet but he was still running wildly back and forth - only something was different. I watched in amazement as he prepared to run through the wireless fence - he knew he was going to get shocked but you could see it in his face - he had decided it was worth it. And sure enough - it seemed as if he counted to three and just ran!! Right through the invisible line he came, joyfully bounding down the road to greet us. He was one happy puppy.  Needless to say, we let him walk with us the rest of the journey.


Jesus spoke about the kind of love we are to have for one another. A love in which we are willing to lay down our own life for another - or run through an electrically charged fence at least!  A love that says I will go through hurt and risk and danger just to be close to you, just to love you, just to be in relationship with you.  My dog gets it...why is it so hard for the rest of us?  Why is it that those of us who proclaim to follow Christ and his ways have so much trouble with this loving our neighbor section?  


Why would we rather focus on our differences and use them as battering rams to beat one another over the head? Why do we prefer to judge and condemn a book, a church, or a denomination without ever even reading it, going to it, studying it? Why are we constantly seeking to tear down rather than built up? Why do we think we can bully and berate someone into repenting their sin rather than taking the time to love them as Christ does and let God do the work of redeeming and transforming them as He sees fit?


I'm so happy that my dog loves me enough to put his neck on the line to be with me...I'm so awed that my Jesus loves me enough to lay his life down for me...I'm so humbled that I deserve neither of those wonderful things - but I receive them anyway.  It seems wrong to me to take that amazing grace and the sweetest form of love and twist it into something hateful and bitter.  As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure Jesus warned against it.


We worship a powerful and mighty God who has consistently used saint and sinner alike to achieve his work.  We worship an amazing and miraculous God who had taken the most hardened of sinners and transformed them into the greatest of God's warriors.  We don't want to interfere with that powerful, mighty, amazing and miraculous God. So, why don't we love God, love our neighbor as ourself (even the ones that sin and the ones we don't agree with) - and let God do what God does best - redeem us all.

Songs Amidst the Thunder

I woke this morning to the sound of thunder (and yes I am hearing Bob Seger in my head as I type that line) and heavy rain. It is very hard to get out of bed on a morning like this and so I took the luxury of lingering there for a bit. I did not sleep, I just listened...and prayed...and listened some more.  I would like to say I heard God speaking to me and leading me toward some great epiphany...but I did not. I tried listening harder...I still heard nothing.  So I stopped listening...and oddly enough - that is when I started to hear.

I stopped being so intent on hearing God's voice and instead I just let the sounds around me begin to nurture me. The rolling thunder - this isn't a violent storm, it has the gentleness of a lover, the murmur of lovely words whispered adoringly in your ear.  The falling rain - mostly a steady heartbeat, sure, even, strong, never threatening. And then I hear the unexpected - birds singing joyfully! In the midst of a storm even the birds have found a song worth singing this morning.

It occurs to me that in church circles we often talk about the raging storms of life and how God is there to calm the seas and get us through - and this I believe to be true. But...it also occurs to me that sometimes the storms in life are gentle ones.  These calm and gentle storms are the hardest, for we don't always see the need to seek God and cling to him as we do when the storm is raging and violent. In the gentle storms we are lulled into a sense of peace that says, I've got this God - no need to busy yourself today.  And there we languish in our own sense of self control and assurance.

I've been in the midst of one of those calm storms for a while and today as I listen to the birds sing I am finding refuge and redemption in the midst of this storm. I have sought to put God back in his rightful place as Lord of my life and I have handed the reigns of control back over to him. I have found peace and comfort in his refuge. I have found redemption in his forgiveness.

Now I lay here, listening to the birds sing...we share joy. They say to me - sometimes a storm is just a storm - relax, listen and enjoy.