You can learn a lot from a dog! I remember hearing once that,
“dogs love their friends and bite their enemies”. But that is not true in every
case. For the most part, no matter how most dogs have been treated, they always
bounce back to loving someone who treats them with kindness and gives them a
little food. You take our dog Odie, he meets us at the back door every morning
howling and ready to get in the truck and go with Charles and me to exercise.
When we arrive at the gym, he sits patiently every morning in the back of the
truck keeping vigil as we go inside, do our routine and come back to him. Even
though he has only gotten out of the truck one time to meet a young woman who
just loved him, he seems to attract a lot of attention to himself, just sitting
in that truck looking around and watching people come and go. Often times, we
have people come up to us while we are in the gym and ask about him. Many of
them now know him by name and stop by the truck to speak to him as they pass
him by. It’s the same way at our house. Everybody just seems to love Odie.
There is nothing special about him other than, he just wants to be their friend
and his sweet and good nature just seems to attracts people to him like a
magnet.
This morning as we were leaving the gym, I prayed and ask
the Lord to help me to be more like Odie. While I want to attract people to me,
it is really the Lord in me that I want to be a mirror of, that others may look
at me and see the one who give me His nature to love, in spite of how I may be
treated by others at times. If Odie were a female her name would have to be
Grace or Mercy, because frankly he has not been treated well by some of the
other dogs in our neighborhood. Yet, all he wants, is to be their friend. He
has survived some close calls with aggressive neighborhood dogs and yet, in
spite of it all, his animal instinct and nature continues to draw him back to
those mean dogs that attack him whenever he gets the chance to be around them.
Doesn’t that remind you of humans? Odie cowers down and ends up going to the
vet to get stitches whenever he goes around those aggressive dogs and we have
to keep him tied up or in the house these days, for his own protection.
Some people may think that he is a coward and does not want
to fight back. But Odie is not a coward! His love for me and my husband, even
our children and grandchildren goes very deep. No doubt in my mind, if he saw
one of us being hurt, he would quickly come to our defense. There is something
very deep in the lesson that God is teaching me through Odie’s life. You see,
God is calling His children to a higher love, a deeper care and concern for
others. We don’t have to fight every time something in our nature is attacked.
Unlike animals, we can turn the other cheek and let God take care of our
reputation. If Odie were the aggressive mean spirited dog like his would-be
friends around the corner were, then he would not be the likeable, easy going
loveable natured dog that everyone loves. People would not want to come around
him, nor would they want to come around us. I have to ask myself, am I drawing
people to me or is something in me keeping them away from the love that I need
to be reflecting and sharing with them. How about you sweet friend. Are people
drowned to you because of the light that you are reflecting for Christ or, are
you hiding it under something of no importance in the Kingdom of God? “See what
kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of
God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did
not know him.” 1 John 3:1
Loving on you today! -Bren
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