Everything I know about prayer, I learned from my dog.

For some reason today I’ve been thinking a lot about what my dog taught me about prayer and understanding God’s will.

Sheba, our black lab, lived with us for 17 years; she’s been dead for four years now. After her initial shots, we never took her to the vet again, and, in spite of common knowledge to the contrary, we usually fed her table scarps, and on rare occasions a can of dog food..

One day as I was driving in heavy rain the rubber blade on my windshield wiper gave out. A nuisance. The next Saturday while Ginny was shopping at WalMart, I bought some replacement blades and took them home to mount on the car.

Here I am parked in our drive on a bright sunny day trying to squeeze those rubber refills into the metal fixture. And Sheba sat alertly watching what interesting thing I was doing.

She whined and pawed the ground but she never took her eyes off me. She could not have watched more intently if I’d have been opening a can of Alpo. She cocked her head from one side to the other and gave every indication of yearning to help me accomplish whatever it was that I was doing. She seemed distressed that I was having trouble getting the task done.

I laughed.

And I just loved that stupid old dog for wanting to help.

That night at my prayers I puzzled over some situation I just could not understand; why had God let such-and-such happen?

Why didn’t He listen to my fervent prayer and advice about how to remedy the situation?

How can I follow the will of God when I don’t even understand what it is He’s trying to do?

Why does God want us to pray when most of the time we don’t even have an inkling of what to pray for?

As I struggled with such questions, the image of Sheba sitting in the drive staring intensely at me as I worked burst back into my mind.

I realized that I can no more understand the actions of God than Sheba could understand why I was changing the windshield wiper blades!

And I thought that maybe our Father may just enjoy our company ,attention and good will – even when He has no need of our advice.