Gone To The Dogs

Just as I started work Monday, my friend Barbara White called inviting me to lunch. Ever diligent in looking for any excuse to avoid writing, I quickly agreed to go.

At the Silver Star, a favorite Chinese restaurant, Barbara told me about the sense of contentment she’s found after the last of her cancer chemotherapy treatments. Initially, she felt that since she’s apparently been granted more days to live, she ought to work harder at achieving something significant.

But she said, “Recently, I’ve realized that it’s ok to be insignificant”

As she prayed about what to do with the rest of her days, she said that a sense of calmness, peace and deep-seated contentment came over her as she realized that she did not need to do anything to gain God’s approval.

“When I was a girl, about 13,” she said, “I realized that God loves me. That’s never changed. And I hadn’t done anything to please Him then. It was His grace. That hasn’t changed either”.

The love of God is commended toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

“We don’t have to be important, to be important to Him,” she said.

As her sense of contentment and peace grows, Barbara says she is letting go of many attitudes and activities once important to her. These things are just drifting away. No feeling of giving them up. They are just not important to her anymore.

Her focus for years has been on simply knowing Jesus and being in His presence; that element of her life continues to grow and grow.

I suggested that people are like dogs.

A dog loves nothing better than to be with his master no matter what the activity. A dog loves to ride in the car with head out the window, earls flapping in the breeze. But he’s just as content to chase sticks. Or to lay on the floor with his head resting on your slippers while you read.

He needs to do nothing else to be a perfect dog.

Barbara said, “John, I like your analogy, but it’s only true if that dog has a home”.

Months ago, I thought of giving my diary this year the title, A Dirty Old Man Goes To The Dogs… I had in mind Francis Thompson’s poem The Hound of Heaven: it’s about how we run away from God, away from Home,

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;

  I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

  Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears

I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

Few things are sadder than a dog without a home, without a master. Poor mutt, coat unkempt, ribs showing, ranges back and forth across the highway dodging cars.

Bewildered.

Homeless.

Fearful.

Lost.

And, there is a dogcatcher on the prowl.

Fear not, Puppy. The whole message of Christmas is that your Owner has come looking for you. Your picture and name, He’s posted on every telephone post in town. He came into this world to seek and to save the lost.

The eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward Him.

No sooner than this picture entered my mind, than I remembered the refrain of Will L. Thompson’s (not the same guy who wrote Hound of Heaven) 1880 hymn Softly And Tenderly Jesus Is Calling:

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling,
Calling for you and for me;
See, on the portals He’s waiting and watching,
Watching for you and for me.

Come home, come home,
You who are weary, come home;
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, O sinner, come home!

After lunch, Barbara drove me over to Hall’s Nursery where I bought a live Christmas tree in a big black pot, and two poinsettias.