Kelseyology
If you can't handle the words "theology" and "dog poop" in the same sentence, you'd better stop reading now. Because what follows is an ongoing story about what a dog is teaching me about theology, and when you combine dogs with anything, you're going to get some poop.
Sooner. Not later.
And there's a lesson right there, right off the bat. There's some bad stuff out there in the world of theology, and it would be best if you didn't step in it.
In my seminary days, for instance, there were warring factions on campus, some insisting on a "moderate" version of theology, some demanding a "conservative" approach, with plenty of words like "radical," "liberal" and "fundamentalists" flying around the campus like so much shrapnel.
Then there was the decade when a rival denomination sprang up within my own particular denomination, and for a while there, some of the folks in our small-town church were ready to drive a stake through the hearts of some of the other folks, so great was the concern over right doctrine. Seriously, I doubt the national office was counting on us to win that little war, but we sure fought like the world was waiting on the outcome.
More recently, someone asked me if I was a Calvinist. Had I said yes, the second question would have dealt with whether or not I was a five-point Calvinist. Other options would be the four-point versions, the basketball-playing three-point variety, or even the ever-growing faction of pointless Calvinists.
Yes, there's a lot of stuff you don't want to step in out there, and in a dog's way of thinking, I rarely even leave my yard. In the bigger world, there's a multi-fractured collection of Lutherans, Catholics, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Charismatics, Methodists, and of course, Baptists. Within every group are countless differences of grave theological importance, though Kelsey doesn't give a rip about any of them.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Of all these groups, I'm most familiar with the Baptists, since I was carried in a Baptist womb, raised in a Baptist church, married to a Baptist girl, and even made pastor of a few Baptist churches. If you're not a Baptist, you need to know this: We're not a unified group.
The theology inside Baptist life is as varied as one of those cardboard kaleidoscopes we used to have as kids, only not as pretty when you peer inside it. Remember the kaleidoscopes? They must have put a little bit of glitter and what-not in the tube, and then put a reflective surface with a few angles on it at the end. Hold it up to the light, turn the tube, and the glitter and what-not stuff scattered into beautiful patterns, and not one time would it ever form the same pattern.
That's what Baptist theology looks like. We've got independent Baptists, cooperating Baptists, moderates Baptists, liberals, conservatives, fundamentalists, and even a few snake-handling Baptists. Inside all those groups will come several versions of charismatic factions, King-James-only factions, 7-11 chorus factions, hard-line hymn book factions, suit-and-tie groups, the jeans and pullovers gang, the gospel-quartet club ... the list just never ends. There are, literally, thousands of Baptist denominations, and inside each denomination, uncountable brands of theology.
Theology? Literally, that's "words about God." In the Greek language, "theos" means "God" and "logos" means "words." Thus, "theology" is what people say about God.
God is probably weary of most of what passes as theology, and certainly, the theological fights. If He's not, I am.
That's why I'm a proponent of Kelseyology.
"All five points?" You ask? You bet. I'm the original hard-liner.
Actually, we Kelseyans aren't really deep enough to have five points. I've been in the circle for a long time, and it's never even occurred to me to count the points. Instead, I'd rather pet Kelsey.
Kelsey is my dog.
She's a wonderful dog, best I've ever had. And I've noticed this about Kelsey. She doesn't know a thing about rising fuel prices, she'll never comprehend inflation, she doesn't know where the food comes from, at least not beyond the concept of the big yellow bag we keep near her bowl. Kelsey doesn't understand how the roof manages to stay on our house, why there's water in the toilet (it fascinates her), or that there's a big world out there, much, much bigger than the back-yard of our home. She certainly has never lost sleep over Calvinism, Luther's thesis, the Armenians, or even Jimmy Carter's repeated, frustrated efforts to unify Baptists.
All Kelsey really knows is her Master. And as a result, she sleeps really well at night. In fact, she sleeps pretty good during the day, too. She likes the fireplace in the winter, and she loves a swimming pool in the summer. Her world is extremely simple, and her demeanor indicates that she absolutely loves life, and that she loves me. In fact, she just walked over and stuck her nose under my arm, just to see if her classic move was still good for a scratch behind the ears.
It was.
Anyway, that's it. There's not much to it. But it's kind of like Robert Fulghum's classic book, All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. If people can take a refreshing look at life by remembering the simplest days of education, then perhaps - just maybe - I might be able to learn something about religion from my dog.
The main lesson? I've determined to know my Master, and leave the details up to Him.
Sound too simple? Look at it this way. No human being has ever gotten it all right, and no one ever will. And no two human beings have ever agreed on every point of theology, and I seriously doubt if it'll happen in my lifetime. After all, didn't Jesus say, "If two or three of you ever get together, I'll come down to see it myself?"
In seminary, I studied the brilliant works of Karl Barth, easily one of the most respected and revered theologians of the 20th Century. It was a class assignment, and it took hours to wade through only a portion of what he wrote on Romans. Ironically, anyone can read the original letter to the Romans in half an hour, and pretty much understand it with or without Barth's carefully worded, multi-volumed insights.
I also appreciate Martin Luther, who fathered the Reformation in the 16th Century, with one major exception. Tragically, his anti-Semitism late in his ministry gave Adolf Hitler a religious hook on which he hung the Holocaust. It may have been the worst case of religious abuse of all time. "Theology" gave Hitler a way to use the name of Christ as a means of torture and death for the very people Christ knew and loved inside his own, very Jewish home.
John Calvin, a contemporary of Martin Luther, countered with a new theology, but his ideas on pre-destination are in clear conflict with the basic mission of Jesus, and the command he gave us to offer the gospel to the entire world. Besides, until I hear a Calvinist preach that theology at a funeral, it doesn't count. Can you imagine it? "Sorry, Mrs. Jones, but old Bob here was doomed from the start, predestined for darkness, and about all we're going to get from this funeral is a plate of potato salad."
Now that would be an interesting funeral. But I'll bet you've never heard it preached, either.
To be fair, I doubt my dog has gotten it all right. But she sure seems a lot happier napping in front of the couch than all those hot-under-the-collar seminary boys do as they try to win their five-pointed arguments of whatever brand of faith they favor, as if they were winning souls by out-shouting one another.
I like the idea of being a Kelseyan. And I've got a suspicion there are a lot of us out there, even if we didn't know what to call this particular branch of knowing the Master.
I'll make you a promise. If you'll spend a few enjoyable moments with me and Kelsey, we'll never host a national convention, never entertain an argument about whether or not the dog food was predestined to be in a yellow bag or a red one, and never hold a series of Bible studies to sort out conservative dog biscuits from liberal ones.
But we might go swimming soon, and then lay in the sun until it's time for dinner.
Care to join us?
In the beginning ...
This story actually starts with the cat.
Our cat.
Your cat might be your most favorite animal of all. But in the beginning, this particular cat would have been almost no one's favorite. She was sullen and grumpy every hour of every day, with no exceptions.
But even this cat had a theological purpose, I think, because she reminded me every day that I don't want to go to hell. If a creature could be this miserable on the earth - seemingly a good place, by and large - what's it going to be like in hell?
For 11 years, the cat told me, in her own, hateful way, not to find out.
We call her "Kitty," and if it weren't for my daughter, I might have secretly killed her long ago. But she follows our youngest like a puppy, never hesitates to jump in her arms, and there she purrs like the sweetest thing you'd ever want in a cat.
On occasion, the cat also seemed to like my wife, and our other daughters.
But me? She hated me.
For the first couple of years, I tried to write it off as a coincidence. I'd walk into a room, for instance, and the cat would leave. She'd look at me first, with disgust dripping off her whiskers, and walk out with the most pompous cat-attitude you'd ever want to see. The scars on my arms - and my heart - began to pile up.
Once in a while, she sat in my lap. Someone would put her there, or I'd catch her, and the transformation would start. Ears back. Tail twitching. Eyes black with hatred. Claws out.
The cat wasn't happy either.
In her defense, the claws came out when she was a kitten, when she playfully attacked my foot. Unfortunately, I was in a deep sleep at the time, somewhere in the dark hours of the night.
What would you do if claws attacked your feet in the middle of the night?
I'm not sure what happened next, since I was asleep and the room was dark, but it sounded like I kicked the pain off my feet, and it sounded like a cat flew across the bedroom, and it sounded like a cat hit the wall with a thud, slid down the same wall, and hit the floor running.
It was an accident. I didn't mean to do it. I apologized when I saw her the next day.
It was all for naught. Ever since, Kitty tried to kick back.
Never once did she give me credit for providing her the food she eats, the roof under which she rules, the air conditioning comfort she enjoys in August, or the warmth of the fire I provide in February. Instead, whenever she saw me coming, she ran away as if she had spotted a terrorist.
For nine, long years it was like that in my house, and deep in my heart, I wanted a dog.
I've always loved dogs, and ever since the collies had both died, I'd longed for a dog.
What's so good about a dog? What's not good about a dog? No wonder that "dog" spelled backwards is a reflection of heaven itself. Dogs relish a man's company, dogs love to be petted, dogs can be trained to obey, and dogs, well, smile.
Cats don't smile. Dogs almost laugh.
We met Kelsey on the campus of a nearby university, where a coed had once thought it a neat idea to have a puppy in her apartment. Seventy pounds later, she'd had enough of the neat idea.
Kelsey is part lab, part retriever, and part kangaroo. On that university campus, she also appeared to be part race horse. Cooped up in an apartment all day, the evening run was a study in quantum physics, or at the very least, a glimpse of the Kentucky Derby. She ran like a wild woman, laughing at the joy of being outside, occasionally stopping to splash in a mud puddle, and once in a while, appearing to actually listen to her young owner.
My wife's eyes were wide with panic, but the whole thing was her fault. She had found the ad in the paper, and she had made the initial phone call. She'd talked about having a lap dog around, and we'd even tried out a Chihuahua for a week. Thankfully, we found another owner. A dog that small isn't a real dog, anyway. It's kind of an "emergency dog," the kind you'd reach for if your real dog breaks. But on top of that, that particular Chihuahua barked at me, in my own house! It sat in my wife's lap, and barked at me, the dog-lover! It was a cat in disguise, that dog.
"We'll take her," I told the coed, and my wife nearly fainted. I expected tears from the coed, but if there were any, they didn't show in the dark. Since she never called to check on her beloved pet, I figure she was probably holding her breath that someone would just take the beast away.
Anyone.
We loaded the dog in the back of a truck, took the peripherals that came with the dog, and headed home. All the way back, I tried to imagine the look of that cat when a nightmare bounded into her life. Even now, it brings a smile to my face.
I had the dog on a leash, even inside, but I guess Kitty just hadn't planned on meeting Godzilla that Thursday night. She practically inverted. Head pretty much went inside the body, and her eyes went wild with fear. In a flash, she disappeared.
But before she left, dog coming at her full bore, I made sure the cat understood that the dog and I were a team.
Revenge is sweet.
I showed the dog around, and when she spotted the pool in the back yard, you could tell Kelsey figured she'd just landed in heaven. After nearly a year inside a small apartment, and inside a four-by-four cage for most of that time, now she had a back yard, with her own pool! It was too cold for a swim that night, but it wasn't long before she was swimming laps and soaking up the rays with the rest of us.
And that's how it all started, my realization that my theology is best told through the story of a dog, the one who right this very minute is playing in the den, enjoying the best life she'd never dreamed possible.
And with that comes theology lesson No. 1, one of ultimate importance. Dogs are a heck of a lot more fun than cats, and heaven is immeasurably better than hell. Choose heaven.
Bad dog
Kelsey wasn't a dream-come-true for any of us, for a while. She ignored commands, chased cats (technically, that's a sin), and treated a leash like a game of tug of war.
A veterinarian once told me that dogs don't see the people in their lives as people. They see us as dogs. We're all a pack, those of us who live together, and every pack needs a leader. If you won't be Alpha Leader, the dog will take over.
That explains how the yapping fluff ball next door runs its family, come to think of it. No one else wanted to be Alpha Leader, so Fluffy took the title.
At any rate, watch a couple of episodes of The Dog Whisperer, and you'll get the idea. It takes a choke leash, an attitude, and some practice.
In Kelsey's case, I thought we were going to have a battle to the death over who was going to be Alpha Leader in our pack. She had run the show in her old pack, and now she assumed there were no rules that actually applied to her.
On one particular day, she ran into the neighbor's yard, ignored my commands, chased a cat, ignored my neighbor's commands, and then refused to come home. When she finally did, she darted past me and raced into the back yard like it was a game. It was great fun, the entire ordeal, and she laughed at me, her new playmate.
But there's one thing she hadn't counted on. While she was running through that streak of raw rebellion, I headed for the recycling bin and grabbed a newspaper. Rolled up like a club, there's something about a newspaper paddling that dogs hate.
Kelsey was, and is, terrified of rolled-up newspaper. In a few moments, she found out that I was the other item in her life worthy of fear. Face to snout, both of us laying on the ground in the privacy of the back yard, I explained that she had sinned and fallen far short of the glory of God, and that the wages of her sin might be immediate death if she ever pulled a stunt like that again.
She repented.
And sinned again.
She repented.
And sinned again.
She was the living version of Romans 7, doing what she knew to be wrong, and hating the way she was forced to deal with the consequences of her choices.
In time, she would sin far less, and actually learn to be quite the obedient dog. But right there at first, it was constant confession.
In the meantime, the cat was not doing well. We'd anticipated a fight from the cat. Instead, she went inside some kind of Freudian cat shell, and stayed there for weeks. She lived under a dresser, ate her food in a private bathroom, and refused to be comforted. The first time my wife brought her into the same room with the dog, she peed all over herself.
The cat, not my wife.
It was terrible. She played dead, her heart raced, and never raised a claw to the big, black nightmare that had taken over the den.
Her therapist finally suggested "forced compliance."
Actually, it was the vet, but at those prices, I feel better thinking of him as a therapist. We had a cat cage for vet trips, and at his suggestion, we put the cat cage in the middle of the den, and put the cat in the cage. Finally, she couldn't run and hide just because Kelsey was in the room.
The dog thought it great fun. She'd bounce and pounce, come close to the caged cat and then dart away. The good news is that the cat actually began to fight a little. The dog learned not to come too close, and we marveled at the sounds coming from the cat.
Remember Linda Blair from The Exorcist? The guttural sound coming from the cat in the cage would have given Linda herself chills. It was demonic, to put it mildly.
The cat-in-the-cage therapy went on for a few weeks, and both animals learned that the cage provided wonderful security. The cat knew the dog couldn't eat her, and the dog knew the cat's swipes were harmless.
In a few days, the cat began venturing into the upper end of the house again. She'd look carefully for the beast, and if the coast was clear, she'd spend time remembering the house she once ruled.
There came a day, however, when the cat and dog met in the dining room. By chance, my wife, our youngest daughter, and I were also in the dining room. When the cat didn't run away, we all froze. A bouncing dog was on one side, and a coiled-up cat held her ground in the middle of the room. It was obviously a key moment, and four of the five of us figured blood was about to fly.
Only the dog thought it was a game.
Kelsey bounded, bounced, and pounced. The cat started with the low growl. To this day I'm sure I heard, "We are Legion ..." but no one else backs me up.
"Kelsey," I said quietly, "you need to be careful.
"Kelsey, the cat's not in the cage this time, Kelsey."
I raised my voice. "You need to leave, Kelsey!"
The bouncing dog came closer than ever, and at the last, putrid, horrifying, feline growl, two house plants wilted on the spot.
"Kelsey, watch out ... Kelsey, get out now! Kelsey, Kelsey ... KELSEY THIS IS NOT A CHRISTIAN CAT! Kelsey, watch out!"
The cat took her best shot, the dog shot back like canon recoil, and all three humans ducked for cover. We saw no obvious bleeding, but the look on Kelsey's face clearly indicated massive confusion. Shock, even.
The lesson? You play around with the wrong thing long enough, pain is headed your way. Your sins will find you out, God will not be mocked, and there's a reason dogs the world over don't mess with a coiled-up cat.
Within a week, the cat went where she wanted, dog or no dog.
But I'm afraid the theology is all too true. Most of us dance a little too close to dangerous cats, at some point in our lives. Sin looks like a game, and our own power seems to assure us that sin will never unleash the claws that can cut us to ribbons.
From Adam to Eve, from David to Simon Peter, from me to you, most of us learn the lesson the same way Kelsey did. Sin hurts. It stings. In fact, sin carries a price tag far too high, a pain far too costly, and a time of reflection that usually results in dogs napping on one side of the room, and the cat ... anywhere she pleases.
Eventually, sin hurts.
So leave it alone.
The vet
Kelsey hates the vet.
Our veterinarian has a nice little office with four exam rooms with just enough room for a big dog, the Master, and eventually, the good doctor himself. There's a table in the middle of the room where all kinds of bad things happen to dogs, and Kelsey knew, even on our first trip there, that she wanted nothing to do with The Table.
By the time the door opened and the vet walked in, Kelsey was trying to hide behind me, in a space wide enough for a Beagle, perhaps, but not nearly large enough for the two of us together.
I asked if he had any courage pills, but alas, he was out.
And yet I continue to take her to the vet's office, and even help get her up on the table. I pay the big bills at the end of the visit, give her the medicine the vet prescribes, and make an appointment for the next visit before we leave. You know the reason I do such things, of course. You and I have a larger brain than most dogs, and we understand that everything that happens at the vet's office is for the good of the pets of owners who bring them there. Even surgery is a good thing, when it's needed.
Kelsey will never figure this one out. She will never, ever, ever understand why I take her out of her wonderful environment in the back yard, with the pool, through the house with the fireplace and the carpet and the girls who love her, offer her a ride in her favorite car, ONLY TO TAKE HER TO THE VET!
It never makes sense to me, either, when a perfectly good life gets messed up by pain, inconvenience, tragedy, crisis, depression, stained teeth, impotence, hernias, or any one of the other ways life can generally put on a latex glove and just do a number on you.
And yet God takes us there.
And while we're there, he encourages us. "All things work together for good for those who love Him, and are called according to His purpose," comes the truth. He promises to give us a future, and a hope, to prosper us, and not to harm us. And yet the very prophet who heard that promise was known as the Weeping One, and his people knew about as much pain as any would know.
There we are, hearing the words of encouragement, hiding the best we can, all the while doomed to The Table, where God works for our good.
If Kelsey could see and understand the heart of a dog killed by heart worms, she would know why I take her to the vet. If Kelsey could understand a bit about biology or genetics, and certainly a few chapters on veterinary medicine, I think she could bear the visits a little better.
But she can't understand any of it. She will never understand anything but what she sees, right in front of her. And so she hides in the little exam room, becoming as small as an 80-pound dog could ever be, wondering why the Master would be so cruel.
God has His reasons, even on the days when we think Him to be cruel.
Trust Him.
She's a Jewish dog
Meaning, she can't eat ham.
Kelsey and I both had to learn a painful lesson about table scraps. She gets bladder stones from eating ham, and I get enormous financial stones, thanks to the vet bills.
The cat has a routine, every single morning that involves screaming at the female humans in the house, demanding a few pieces of deli-ham. I've actually dropped a bit of ham on the floor for her myself, from time to time, but I swear, the cat turns up her nose at my ham and waits for my wife, or one of the girls, to feed her the morning delicacy.
Kelsey saw the pattern and was more than happy to take ham from any of us. Kelsey would even eat ham if the cat dropped it on the floor. Come to think of it, Kelsey would probably eat a hairball, just in hopes that it might have ham in it.
But the vet said, "No ham," and that's that.
Therefore, Kelsey is now a Jewish dog.
So was almost everyone in the Bible.
How did we miss that, in the Christian church? How did we come to paint and cast Jesus as a California surfer dude, or at best, a nicely tanned Italian? Best I can tell, he was Jewish.
Mary was Jewish, and so was Joseph. That put him in a Jewish household. Passover was, and is, a major Jewish holiday, and Jesus knew all the lines. Makes sense, too, since he sat through roughly 33 Passover meals, including the last meal he had before his crucifixion.
The disciples were all Jewish, and the writers of the books of the Bible, save Luke, appear to be thoroughly Jewish.
Like Kelsey, none of them ate ham.
Or hairballs.
Nothing has transformed my view of Christianity like going back to its Jewish roots. The first time I was in Jerusalem, the place was filled with Jewish people who danced through the night, all eventually congregating at the Western Wall, where they read and celebrated Torah as the sun came up.
I asked my tour guide later what the celebration was about.
"Pentecost," he said, bowing to my Americanized, Christianized understanding of the holiday. Had he said "Shavuot," the proper name for the celebration, I'd have brushed it off. But he clearly said, "Pentecost."
"Pentecost?" I said. And I wondered: What were all those Jewish people doing, celebrating a Christian holiday?
Turns out, for the past 2,000 years or so, Christians have been celebrating a Jewish holiday! The "Day of Pentecost" in Acts 2, the Bible tells us, was a Jewish holiday. Still is.
As Christians, we've got a lot to learn about our Jewish roots. We've got a lot of apologizing to our Jewish neighbors for what our forefathers have done to the Jewish people over much of the past 1,700 years. And we've got to vow that we will never again remain silent or uninvolved when the very people of the Bible come under attack.
Kelsey would never understand war and efforts to exterminate an entire people group. Kelsey would never comprehend the miracle it is that Israel is living again, right in front of our eyes, helping uncover the ancient land of the Bible, stone by dusty stone.
But I do, and it's having a major impact on my theology, and how I react to modern theological arguments.
Take Calvinism. Much of the passion around Calvinism deals with the concept of predestination. Back and forth the argument goes, swinging this way for a while, and another way for a season, with each person chiming in on what he or she thinks "predestination" means.
All the while, we've ignored the most fundamental question of all, the one that needs to be answered before we move an inch further. Here's the question:
What did Jesus mean, or Paul mean, as Jewish rabbis living 2,000 years ago when they first spoke or wrote the words that fueled the theology of Calvin? We know Luther eventually shrugged off all things Jewish. Calvin lived in the same era. Neither man, nor anyone else living between roughly CE 135 and 1948 was able to see Israel's living classroom like we can see it. So they came up with some major theological premises without taking the Jewish point of view into consideration.
And that could be a fatal blow to any theological position.
Aren't we wasting time trying to defend theological viewpoints that came 15 to 16 centuries after Jesus lived and Paul spoke, since almost all of those viewpoints did not take into consideration the Jewish factor?
Hang with me for a moment.
I heard a teacher once ask, "Read a few verses out of John 2 and stop me when you get to something 'Jewish.'" I knew that there were six stone water pots in this story, set there for the ritual washings of the Jews. I was ready with an answer, six verses into the passage.
The volunteer reader started, and by the end of the first sentence, the teacher held up his hand. "You've gone too far, he said.
We read it again.
On the third day, there was a wedding in Cana.
OK, I give up. What's Jewish about a simple phrase like this?
The teacher began to unfold it.
"What day did you get married?" he asked. Most of the students said, "Saturday." I was among them. Saturday's the main day for weddings in our culture.
"What's the third day?" he asked again. Finally, one of us said, "Tuesday."
"Exactly!" said the teacher. And when does Tuesday start? On Monday evening, at sundown, he reminded us.
I'm thinking, "They planned a wedding when they knew it would conflict with Monday Night Football?"
He then explained that most Jewish weddings then, and some of them now - by tradition - are held on Tuesdays, and most of those, on Monday evenings. Obviously, people can get married, and do get married, any day of the week they desire. But an amazing number still happen on Monday evenings. I've seen some of them.
"Why is this so?" asked the teacher, obviously not expecting an answer from us. "Because it's the day of double blessing!"
Blank stares, all around.
"Haven't you read Genesis 1?" At the moment, I felt as though I'd missed even that. "Read it again," said the teacher, and you'll see that God said, "It is good," after every day of creation except one. On Tuesday, God blessed his creative work twice. It's the day of double blessing, and because of that, many couples chose then, and even choose now, to be married on the third day."
It was shocking.
There's more in that particular passage, more than you'd believe, if you've not seen it before. It's one of the most insightful things you'll ever do, to study the Jewish roots of Christianity, and in another way, it's one of the most frightening things you'll ever do.
For the way I figure it, if we've misunderstood or missed even the simplest of details by being a predominately Gentile church, we've probably missed a lot of really important stuff. I mean, it's kind of fun to learn more about wedding receptions, but what about the major thoughts on God?
What about, for instance, did the Jewish rabbis mean, 2,000 years ago, when they talked about the concept of predestination?
Until we figure that one out, I'm not going to waste time battling over scholars who clocked in 1,600 years later, bound and determined not to let anything Jewish flavor their thinking.
From the look in her eyes, Kelsey agrees completely.
Unless, of course, she's begging for ham.
Greed stinks
I've wrestled long enough with the polite way to say this. There simply is no way to say this politely.
Kelsey likes to "mark" her territory.
That is, she pees on things.
She pees on the grass around the mailbox, because other dogs have peed there. It's some kind of ongoing pee contest to see which dog can out-urinate the other. This is apparently a big deal to a lot of dogs, because the grass around the mailbox is dying.
She pees on shrubs, she pees on every corner of the back yard, and she pees on the places we visit.
Whenever possible, she also leaves a more permanent reminder of her having been around, if you know what I mean. She'll leave a pile of post-Kelsey in as many areas as possible, and the vet tells me that's just part of being a dog.
She's got her territory, and the way she tells all the other dogs that it's her space is to "mark" it with Kelsey leftovers.
Since I've been married long enough to say this, it's kind of like the way a woman will paint a house that has perfectly good paint on the walls. She moves in, and none of the paint is right. A guy? He hangs up the same, neon-lit beer sign he had in college and calls it home decor. But a woman? She sees the paint on the walls as another woman's ... "mark." And that just won't do.
So dark blue turns to bright yellow. Dark stain gets a painstaking whitewash. The pastels go wild, and the wilds calm down. Wallpaper goes, paneling gets painted, and the painter gets tired.
The only difference in paint and what Kelsey does just boils down to raw materials. If Kelsey had a paint brush, maybe she'd mark her spots with paint. Then again, she'd probably use only yellows and browns.
I took Kelsey to our place in the woods the other day, all 20 acres of it, and watched in amazement at all the marking. I'm telling you, the dog turned into a marking machine. Somehow, she knows the land belongs to her. And only God knows how many deer, possum, snakes and other critters have been across that land in recent days.
Kelsey was determined to let all those other animals know that a new woman had moved in, and by golly, the paint in those woods was changing. Never you mind that Kelsey actually doesn't own any property.
She doesn't own the 20 acres, she doesn't own the mailbox, she doesn't own a single shrub. But she claims them all, and on some days, I think we're going to have to refill her with intravenous fluids just to keep her going.
This, my friend, is a picture of greed. And speaking candidly here, greed stinks. In terms of what the dog does, it literally stinks. But Kelsey doesn't seem to notice the grossness of it. In fact, every day God gives her another opportunity to pee, Kelsey keeps claiming things that aren't hers to claim.
Maybe that's what Jesus had in mind (now there's a transition for you!) when he talked about greed. "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence!" (Matt. 23:25) After watching Kelsey's "marking" ability, I've got a really bad image of what was on the inside of those cups!
In another place (Matt. 6:19), Jesus urged his followers to store up treasures in heaven, because all the things we store up on earth, to put it in a translation Kelsey might understand, decompose. OK, Jesus said "rust," but it's basically the same compost.
On another day, Jesus told the story of a prosperous man who wanted to build bigger barns to store more of his stuff. But the man died overnight when God declared him a fool for thinking he owned things that were never really his. (Luke 12:16-21). Turns out, such a person is no more in charge of the future, and no more in actual possession of things, than Kelsey.
Greed stinks.
Don't step in it.
Life is short
The vet was busy, so I had time to read everything in the exam room. The heartworm illustration was disgusting, so I tried not to look at it. The poster advertising a protection against feline leukemia didn't apply to me or the dog. There were a few other pamphlets around, but mostly, the cramped exam room was all about me, Kelsey, and the chart that said time was moving on.
It was a chart that compared human years to dog years, and it stared at us the entire time we waited on the vet, as if we weren't already aware that life is short.
Most people know that a dog averages roughly seven years every calendar year, which means Kelsey is just about due for a driver's license.
This particular chart was shaded with different colors. There was yellow on the puppy years, and red on the "senior" years. The more a dog weighs, says the chart, the faster the senior years arrive. The chart was sponsored by a particular brand of dog food, one that sells rations to yellow, green, and red dogs.
The green years are the good ones, apparently, between the hyperactivity of puppydom, and the arthritis of senior life.
I couldn't help staring at the chart, for the green years were really, really short. The first time I saw the chart, I decided it had to be wrong. Surely there must be a mistake! If the chart was right, Kelsey would be just getting into her groove when her groove would wear out.
My groove is wearing out, if you want to know the truth.
Life is really passing fast. I've been through too many dogs, and too few cats. I've had three children and watched them all leave home. I caught my reflection in a window the other day, one of those surprise moments when I wasn't expecting to see what I looked like, and thought, "Who's the old guy?"
When I was younger, I looked to men like me and thought, "They know everything!"
Little did I know how little I would know when I got here!
But one thing I do know. Life is over in a hurry.
I can still see my bride walking down the aisle, acting as if she really did want to marry the guy in the Saturday-Night-Fever, all-white tux. That was some three decades ago, right about the time gas shot up to 86 cents a gallon.
It wasn't long before we were holding Baby No. 1, and not long after that, her sister, and once more, a third baby girl. If you had the time, I could tell you enormously boring details about all three births. They were three of the best days of my life, and they went by in a blink.
It's funny how your mind won't let go of the past. It's not unusual to hear a song on the radio and to remember some detail about the teen years my brain should have long ago discarded.
Such mind tricks create the illusion that it was only yesterday when the song played, the preacher made the pronouncement, or the babies let out their first cries.
But it wasn't yesterday. It was years and years ago, back when the chart was all green.
If I'm not in the red zone yet, I'm bearing down on it seven years to one.
Kelsey's such a good dog to have around, there's already a bit of grief knowing she won't be with us forever. Will we have to have her put to sleep? Will she die suddenly, maybe of a snake bite? We have them where we live. We once had a dog, a beagle, that loved to chase cars, stupid habit that it is. One horrible Saturday morning, the beagle caught one. It took our oldest nearly 20 years before she took on another pet. Tellingly, she chose another beagle.
Maybe my grief is not for the dog at all. Maybe it's about all of it. The babies are grown, the couple in the wedding album is aging gracefully, and younger adults ask us questions like we ought to know the answers. There are people in the obits every day who didn't make it to the red zone, and I've buried more than a few friends who were younger than me when they met the undertaker.
My time's coming, as sure as it's coming for you.
Kelsey is blessed with the inability to know her future, or even to read the dog obits. She's completely satisfied with today, which included a two-hour nap with me while the NASCAR boys raced round and round. It was as if she took all the comfort she needed in knowing I was there, and if she needed to go outside, I'd open the door. When it was time to come in, she trusted that I'd be there again, ready at the doorway, glad to have her inside again.
The application seems to be pretty obvious, as long as you know the Master. There will come a time when it's time to move on, and it sure feels good to have complete confidence that when the time comes, He'll be there, waiting with an open door, delighted to have me home.
Scarlett
The first time Scarlett came to our house, she ran away.
Scarlett is the beagle my daughter and son-in-law adopted two weeks ago. They sent out adoption notices, they've read dog-obedience books, they've watched dog shows on TV, they've taken the dog on long walks every day, and on the weekends, they visit a "dog park" in the big city where they live.
I was secretly hoping for a grandchild, but for now, Scarlett will have to do.
She is a black and white mix, with a touch of brown hinting at the original beagle forefather some time back in the family tree. And apparently, one of the ancestors was an escape artist, because Scarlett is one Houdini of a dog. Fences tend not to hold her, when she got out, she was gone in a flash. We followed in a car, spotted her from time to time, and eventually, tackled her.
Man, I was glad we caught that dog.
Kelsey was glad, too, even though Scarlett's first visit made for an amazingly different weekend.
Kelsey, you see, has grown up in a one-dog world. She spent her first year in a small apartment, waiting on her student-owner to get out of class, and take her for a run. No other dogs were there, and until Scarlett arrived, no dogs had been to our home.
Certainly, none had ever been allowed in the house, like Scarlett. None had ever been fed at our table, like the new dog. From Kelsey's point of view, no other dog had ever been doted over by the same family that had always before had been a one-dog-doting pack.
For the first few hours, Kelsey and Scarlett ran around the back yard like a couple of race horses. The energy was unrelenting. Kelsey showed Scarlett how to swim, and Scarlett showed Kelsey how to squeeze through a picket fence. Neither dog learned the other dog's tricks, however. They wrestled hard for the privilege of being top-dog, but in the end, thankfully, that turned out to be me.
As far as the second-tier of dogs go, the Kelsey-Scarlett battle came to a draw. Both seemed to enjoy the company, both got a little grumpy from time to time, and both spent a significant amount of time in the dog run, which turned into a weekend penalty box whenever we tired of two overactive dogs battling for attention.
I know neither dog has a brain much larger than a boiled egg, but I've got to wonder: Was either mutt shocked by the revelation that other dogs exist?
I have been.
Since my brain is much larger than Kelsey's - though I wouldn't make that argument every day - I can look out the window of an airplane and marvel at the lights of the cities below me. I don't always know the cities below me, because the planes tend to fly really high, and really far, and no one ever colors the states the same color as they are on our national maps. No lines, either.
But the cities!
Just when you get to know a few hundred of the few thousands in your own town, you fly over a few dozen other cities, with their few thousands, and then you land in a big place, maybe with a few million, and it occurs to you ... there are a LOT of other dogs out there.
And one day, I got a passport.
It turns out there are more cities underneath more airplanes, more cities than you could ever comprehend. In every one of those places there are people living their lives, building their homes, making families, working hard, studying whatever it is they study, playing their games and enjoying friendships ... all the time with no idea that the world used to revolve around you!
Once in a while, God brings another person into our lives, just like Scarlett bounded into Kelsey's life this weekend. She might come from another culture. He might speak a different language. They might have a different color skin, a different taste in food, a different appreciation for music, and even a different way of relating to God.
Want to waste some time? Determine to be the top dog, no matter what. We've spent a lot of time, money, and blood doing exactly that over the last few millennium, and it's gotten us nothing but heartache. Does it sound all that simple to suggest that maybe we could spend more time playing than growling, and that there's plenty of belly-rubbing available for all of us?
The key? In our house this weekend, two dogs had to realize that they weren't really calling the shots.
I was.
I built the fence, I built the dog run, I held the leash, and I grilled the hamburgers. Any dog who wanted a tasty morsel off the grill was going to have to let me be top dog, whether they enjoyed that thought or not.
One taste of the burgers, and both dogs lay down quietly, more than happy to let the top dog keep grilling.
Actually, in the bigger scheme of things, I'm not the top dog at all, and neither are you. We're just one of six billion or so humans swarming over this planet, all of us here by God's invitation, all of us enjoying His creation, and all of us subjected to His rules.
Scarlett made her way home, and Kelsey's the only dog in the show again, at least until another visit. But the world is different tonight, because Kelsey made an important discovery that wouldn't be a bad one for us.
There are other dogs out there ... and that's a good thing.
The storm
It stormed last night, so that means we didn't sleep so well.
Kelsey is terrified of thunder and lightning, and we've never been able to convince her that she's going to be OK. She's inside a nice house, dry as dust, and even if the lights flicker, no one else is in panic mode.
So Kelsey panics for us.
She pants, she paces, she tries to get in a lap. At 80 pounds, that's not an easy trick. She picks out a spot in a bathroom, decides that's not safe enough, and heads for a closet. Eventually, it's bed time.
Under the bed time.
It was just after midnight last night when the dream I was having started thumping.
Thump, thump. Thump, thump, thump.
When the dream ended, abruptly, the thumping continued.
It was Kelsey, brave dog that she is, as far under our bed as she could get, jammed up against the wall, and her tail was wagging in a nervous twitch. It was dark in the house, of course, and through the window there came a flash of very distant, and completely silent, lightning. It was the kind of lightning that only appears after the storm has passed, the kind that simply flashes from one cloud to another.
To Kelsey, it was an imminent danger.
We were all up. Husband, wife, cat and dog. The dog bed went into a walk-in closet, and the dog was ordered to sleep the rest of the night among the empty shoes and the full clothes hamper.
She stayed there, well out of sight of the quiet flashes in the clouds, and eventually got more sleep than me.
I read the paper with blurry eyes, and the headlines told of a financial crisis of immense proportions. The government was trying to reverse the trend, spending more money than ever. Nevertheless, Wall Street was predicting doom and gloom. But doggone it, said the experts, all the consumers had crawled under their beds, thump-thump-thumping their way into panic mode, despite living in the most prosperous country in the world.
The experts say it'll take years to recover from this economic thunderstorm, and I suppose they're right. It's hard to recover from anything if you're too scared to come out of the closet!
What is the deal with fear anyway? How many times does God have to introduce himself to us by saying, first of all, "Fear not!" And after all these years of singing about heaven, why is it that so many people act like death is the worst thing that can ever happen to a person, that all hope is lost, even, when a person dies?
To followers of Jesus? Isn't the simplest truth something like this ... that the worst thing that will ever happen to us ... is that we'll go to heaven?
Later on that day, I visited a lady in a doctor's office. The doctor's trade was cancer, and part of the services in the office was a chemotherapy clinic.
I expected to see my parishioner, because we'd arranged for the visit. She would be there for five hours, sitting in a recliner with poison slowly dripping into her veins, and she was more than happy to have the company. So I asked to see her, and was escorted down a long hallway that ended in the treatment room.
It was a big room. And it was wall to wall with cancer patients, with recliners lined up as far as you could see recliners. Nurses moved smoothly from one patient to another, adjusting this, changing that, and carrying on delightful conversations with people who'd been told they had a disease they all hoped they'd never have.
"There's a lot of people here," said my patient, with something of a twinkle in her eye. I tried not to act surprised, but yes, there were a lot of people in that treatment room. And it was only Thursday morning. There would be another batch in later that day, and another group in on Friday, just as there had been another group before this one on Wednesday.
"Are they running a special?" I asked, and she and the lady next to her laughed out loud. Maybe these two were different from the rest, but then again, I didn't sense an ounce of panic in the entire place. Maybe once you're told what you should have known all along - that you're going to die - you quit running from the lightning, and you just enjoy the show.
"My cousins got on the phone and arranged for a family reunion," said my particular patient. "I told them, 'I know what you're doing. You heard I've got Stage Four cancer, and you wanted to hurry up and get together before I die!" She thought it highly amusing, and the two women laughed again.
Another man comes to mind. He, too, battled cancer. Surgery, treatments, shrinking body, the whole package. We corresponded for a while, and he said living with a death sentence was like "living on the edge." Once you know there's a limit, it's like everything becomes more pronounced. The flavors are more intense, the sounds are richer, the family moments are more precious, nature is more stunning ... "I'm telling you," he said, "life on the edge is incredible."
He died, and the rest of us lived. Only thing, like my friend in the clinic recliner, he wasn't spending any time under the bed. If there was a lightning show to be enjoyed, then throw open the window shades and enjoy the brilliance of it all! Better yet, open a window so the thunder can come inside, and maybe even a fresh wave of electric energy, rushing across the face.
I doubt Kelsey will ever understand this, but maybe you and I can grasp it. Before you die, make sure you live. Do away with the fear, and find what it is to live on the edge.
Sable
She arrived just before Christmas, and made her appearance in a stocking. It was one of those cute moments when a husband (me) tries to put a kitten (Sable) in a Christmas package, all the time thinking Norman Rockwell will probably come right over and paint the image of our Christmas fireplace, complete with the kitten peaking out of the stocking, waiting patiently for the receiver of the gift to discover the surprise.
Free word of wisdom: Don't ever force a cat inside a Christmas stocking.
Sable was wide awake, wired for action, and absolutely determined not to spend time trapped in a Christmas boot.
Instead, Sable was interested only in becoming the princess of our home, the heir-apparent to the aloof position held by any cat in any home, if he or she is in charge of things. At the time, Cat No. 1 was still in charge. As fate would have it, "Big Kitty" died shortly thereafter, and Sable had a free run to the throne.
She also had a free run at Kelsey.
Kelsey turned 3 in the early days of Sable's life with us, just old enough to be a little settled in her ways. Kelsey was also more mature by this point, content not to be running at full speed from one corner of the house to the other, or constantly exploring a new corner of the yard.
Sable was all about speed, and exploring, and playing.
Apparently, she also considered herself to be a dog.
If Kelsey walked by, Sable often attacked, playing like a puppy with its mother. When Kelsey drank from the water in the dog's bowl, Sable took a sip, too. If Kelsey took scraps from the table, Sable lined up for her turn. If it was nap time, it wasn't unusual to see cat and dog curled up together, kind of a surreal, "lion and lamb laying down together" moment from the Bible's pages.
And when Sable discovered the big pillow that was designated Kelsey's bed, she took a liking to it. At first, she was content to share the pillow. Within a short few days, however, she took over. She weighed all of three pounds, this kitten, and her favorite place in the house was in the dead center of Kelsey's bed.
Kelsey weighs in at 80 pounds. Her bed is plenty big enough for a 3-pound addition, as long as the cat is willing to take one of the roomy corners after the dog is settled in. But when the kitten stretches out in the very center of the bed? There's just no room for the dog!
It was quite the comical scene to see Kelsey standing near her bed, wanting to stretch out, wanting to take a nap, but stymied by a kitten who, very politely, stretched out her paws as if she were saying, "Thanks."
Only the dog hadn't given away her bed.
And so it came to be that we would often find the kitten on Kelsey's bed, and Kelsey curled up beside her bed, kicked out by the newcomer who was rapidly changing our home.
No one asked Kelsey if it would be OK to add a kitten to our family tree. No one consulted Kelsey on the new rules the kitten would soon write. No one asked the dog if she might mind raising a playful kitten, complete with the sharp claws and the sharp teeth and the ability to out-run, out-maneuver, and out-hide any dog on the planet.
Sable simply showed up, and took over.
Happens all the time in a church. People arrive, find their place, become comfortable with the routine ... and then a newcomer shows up.
No one consulted the old-timer about the newcomer's arrival. No one thought to tell the newcomer where the available seats were. No one, apparently, told the newcomer who did what in the church, and where the available opportunities might lie.
Instead, for someone, the newcomer simply took over.
Sometimes, it's a newcomer who sings better than the established soloist. At other times, it's a prettier girl in the youth group, a stronger young man in the college group, a more popular community leader in the adult section. Once in a while, it's a new minister who changes everything.
One thing about a church. It changes.
We tried going back one time, returning to our first church after a 10-year hiatus. It was a wedding that took us back, and we looked forward to seeing the people who had meant so much to us.
We saw them. Better said, we saw some of them.
A few had died by that point. Several had moved away. And newcomers? They were everywhere.
It was an experience so unsettling, I remember thinking as we left ... "We'll never come back."
So what's the benefit of bringing a new kitten into a home, or welcoming a new cat inside your church?
With Sable, the story is profoundly important.
That particular Christmas was the most difficult Christmas we'd ever faced. My wife's mother had died a few weeks earlier, giving us the first season of holidays we'd ever known without her. The pain was, at times, unbearable.
And that's where Sable had become an answer to prayer. When she was a little girl, Melody's mother had given her a Siamese-mix kitten named Tao. I had known the cat when we were dating, and Melody had talked about that particular cat for years. It had taken on a legendary status, that cat of hers, and she had always longed for a Siamese mix to take its place.
It had been nearly 30 years since Tao had died, and it was the perfect time for a new kitten to arrive. The search took weeks, and finally culminated with perfect timing, bringing a rescued Siamese-mix into our home just before the darkest Christmas of our lives.
And for the next several weeks, if there was laughter in our house, you could almost be assured that a kitten named Sable was the source of the joy.
Kelsey knew none of that, of course.
She only knew that a tiny kitten had claimed her bed, and that mealtime scraps were no longer her exclusive domain.
Thankfully, Kelsey adjusted wonderfully. She was patient with the newcomer, she treated the kitten as if it were a puppy, and she got the message, very quickly, that we expected nothing but a warm reception from the dog of the house, when it came to the kitten of the house.
Here's the lesson. In your church, you'll see newcomers arrive on a regular basis. They'll sit in the wrong seat, more than likely, moving some of the long-timers around. They'll take positions of leadership once held exclusively by a small group of leaders. They'll sing, they'll teach, they'll work, and in every case, they'll take up space and time and positions once held by someone else.
You can growl if you want, or you can patiently believe that God is working according to plan. You can complain bitterly about the position you lost on the big pillow of church life, or you can curl up in another place, and enjoy the same warmth of the same fireplace, and maybe even notice the laughter that's coming from the fellowship.
Think about this. Kelsey literally could have never understood how important a kitten was to our home that particular Christmas. She could only understand that we had decreed a decision, and that she was expected to accept that decision, and behave with gracious hospitality toward the pushy new arrival.
Could God be up to something we could never see, when newcomers arrive at church?
Consider the possibilities.
From God's point of view, a boy and a girl need to be placed within sight of one another so a marriage can eventually take place. Therefore, a move to a new community, and to a new church, might be ordered. While the mom and dad might be the newcomers of focus, the purpose of the arrival might be many years away from a point of discovery.
Perhaps a teenager in your church is struggling with complex issues that need a new, fresh voice if he's ever going to apply the words of Jesus to his life. The newcomer might be that very adult that can make the connection stick, in a Bible study you'll never see.
It could be that the newcomer is there only because of a search for friendship. And yet from God's point of view, it's the search for salvation that has brought the two of you together. If you knew heaven and hell hung in the balance, would it really matter where a newcomer sat? Or if she happens to steal a boyfriend?
God is at work all around us. And on a regular basis, He brings new people into our lives. They change us, they crowd us, they challenge us.
But rarely is it actually about us. God is always working, Henry Blackaby often taught. And when new people arrive, that's a sure sign that God is working again. The best way to adjust? Just find a new place to sit, a new way to serve, and learn the names of the new friends who will somehow bring joy to the very heart of God.
A kitten just raced into the room where I write these words. Kelsey was already here, probably as happy as she'd ever be, again simply resting in my presence.
The kitten climbed a chair, jumped to a desk, and within seconds, tried out my lap as a good place to take a nap.
Kelsey stirred, determined life was still pretty good, and let it go.
Just like that, it worked. The dog napped, the kitten purred, and the man writing the words immensely enjoyed the moment.
Boundaries
Kelsey snapped at me.
Twice.
And I snapped back. Hard. It was an ugly fight, and had my church members or the local PETA officials seen and heard it, I might not have a job or a dog.
But sometimes, you’ve just got to out-bark and out-snap your dog. In the dog world, it’s a matter of establishing Top Dog status. In the man world, psychologists refer to it as “establishing boundaries.” Either way, there’s bound to be some snarling, barking, and an occasional bite.
The whole thing started when the batteries went dead in Kelsey’s special collar. We have an under-ground, electric dog fence, and if Kelsey’s wearing the special collar, she gets a pretty good shock if she comes too close to the fence. It’s actually such a good shock, she won’t go near the invisible line at all. I tried it once, and unless there’s a horrible mistake, I’ll never try it again.
Kelsey hates the collar.
But the fence covers almost an acre of ground, so Kelsey’s got more room than any fenced-in dog I know.
But the battery in the collar went dead, and eventually, Kelsey figured out that the system was broken. For weeks, she stayed right around the house, so we really didn’t mind. But then she decided to camp out on the front porch. Then came the digging in a flower bed. She started roaming, going further and further away from the house.
It was obviously time to get the fence up and running again, but this time, a new battery wouldn’t be the quick fix. I had been doing some landscaping work with the tractor, and somewhere in the one-acre circle, I must have broken the fence.
So Kelsey roamed, Kelsey took up a sneaky life of front-porch living, and Kelsey did just about anything a dog would want to do. In her mind, I think she saw a chance to take over the Top Dog title.
I caught her coming back from a roaming expedition, chased her back home, caught her on the dark side of the house, and it was there that the dark side of the dog came to light.
She snapped at me. She protected her turf. She told me she wasn’t going down without a fight.
So I didn’t disappoint her.
After the fight subsided, she clearly understood that she was Dog No. 2. Over the weekend, Kelsey obeyed every command, without the slightest deviation. She tried to deviate, but the short leash was out. I had the house to myself that weekend, so yelling was permitted. Strong voice. Strong arm. Top Dog.
First thing Monday morning, I called the people who put the fence in. Cost me $95 to have them find the break and repair it. The new battery put me over $100 for the day.
By Tuesday morning, it was worth every penny.
Hate to say it, but I was still dealing with a serious anger-management problem when Old Sparky came back to life. “Say Kelsey,” I said with half a snarl. “Remember The Collar? How about a day with some lightening around your neck?”
In a week or so, we were friends again. In fact, last night we were playing on the floor as if we were both puppies. As far as I know, Kelsey never even got shocked on the re-boot of the system. She might not have the biggest brain in the dog pound, but she remembered the high pitched-warning signal as if we’d never taken a broken-fence break. She’s plenty happy without a front-porch perch, and we’ve got the flower bed back in shape.
As it turns out, boundaries are a good thing.
For Kelsey, and for Kelsey’s owner.
That would be me.
Without boundaries, addiction waits. Pick your poison. Some choose crack cocaine, some go after pornography. One will drink without limits, another can’t walk away from Facebook. Some eat themselves to death, others abuse the very people they love. Others will start a gambling practice that will never end.
There are days when I think it would be nice, in a way, if God put shock collars on all of us.
Reaching for that extra piece of pie? BAMM! Bet you won’t have so much trouble saying no the next time! Sneaking a peak at the Sports Illustrated swimsuit models? KA-POW! Trying to walk across the threshold of a liquor store again? CRACK!
What an interesting world. Might find your neighbor writhing in pain on the wrong side of town. Might spot a few neck burns on your pastor one Sunday. Probably would see some teen-agers nearly fried to death, what with all the raging hormones.
But there is no spiritual shock collar. There aren’t any dramatic blocks between you and forbidden fruit.
If you want it, you can have it.
The shock comes later.
Could be an angry spouse. Furious, even. An ex-spouse, even.
Could be a night in jail. Could be years.
Could be an STD, an empty checkbook, or a crying mother.
Could be that sick feeling in your gut when you know you’ve disappointed the God who called you to better things, when you’ve scorned the Savior who paid such an unspeakable price for every sin.
Kelsey will never voluntarily put on a shock collar. If she had her way, she’d bury the thing in the next county and plead ignorance when I couldn’t find it.
And she would wander. She would roam. She would investigate. And sooner or later, she’d find the highway that’s not all that far away from the safety net we’ve prepared for her. Instead of chasing squirrels or barking at UPS drivers delivering packages to our home, she’d suddenly be one-on-one with tractor-trailer trucks barreling down the highway.
We’ve all seen the dogs that tried to investigate such a highway. They die horrible deaths, they don’t come home, and they lay there as bloated reminders to what happens when the boundaries aren’t respected.
Need some help with some boundaries? Get a friend, be vulnerable, be honest, and ask for help. Stay in the Word, memorize scripture, and learn the discipline of obedience. Re-read the prayer of Jesus, when he was teaching us how to pray. “Pray like this,” Jesus said when he came to the area of boundaries, “God, lead me not into temptation, and deliver me from evil.”
Did you notice it? Jesus did not say, “Ask the Father to make you strong in the face of temptation.” No, not at all. It’s as if he said, “Here, pray like this: ‘Father, please don’t let me come anywhere near temptation today. If I do, you know I’ll probably fail. In fact, I’ll probably fail miserably. So please, just keep me away from the wrong people, the wrong places, the wrong practices. Please.’”
Or, on the other hand, you could ask Him for The Collar.
KA-POW!
Sami
My wife says Sami has “personality.”
Like the other night, when we were engrossed in something on TV. Without warning, a lamp on an end table went flying through the air, crashing to the floor, giving off that flash of a small explosion when a light bulb has met its end.
Sami was sitting near the lamp, staring at the destruction, not at all bothered that our quiet evening had been interrupted.
My wife started to laugh. “Can’t help it,” she said. “He’s just got so much personality.” Apparently, a moth had flown inside the lampshade, and Sami couldn’t resist the attack.
Sami is a kitten, and there’s not another one like him.
I hope.
He’s big enough to run with the big cats, and still young enough to run long past the big-cat nap times. His energy seems boundless. His appetite is boundless. He’s loud, he’s mischievous, he’s a breaker of lamps. The one with the moth in it? That made three lamps he’d sent to the floor, not counting the one he’s broken twice.
Personality galore.
This is the kind of kitten that changes an entire household. Once, when I was deep in thought and writing something more serious than a cat story, I heard a crash in the kitchen. There was no doubt who was behind the noise. I raced to the scene of the accident, noting that our older cat was racing in the opposite direction. She was looking for cover.
On a countertop – where all cats are forbidden – a flower vase was overturned. Flowers were mangled. Water was dripping off the countertop onto the floor.
And there at the bottom, studying the waterfall like a geology student, Sami stared up at the mess without a worry in the world.
I cleaned up as much of the water as cat fur will hold, and then got a towel after all of it.
Melody laughed at the story later that day, the same way she laughs when he scratches on a small couch, the one that’s RIGHT NEXT TO A SCRATCHING POST, looking the humans in the eye as he misbehaves. “Just so much personality!” she says.
It’s funny. I get in trouble for not putting my socks up fast enough, and this cat of hers could probably burn the house down one day, and get no more than a sweet scolding.
That’s love. Unexplainable love. Doesn’t-make-sense love.
She found him through an acquaintance, and it was a rescue situation. Had Sami not met my wife, he might not have seen his second month. But he did meet my wife, and as a result, he lives in the lap of grace like he’s never deserved.
And that, of course, is where I live.
Hate to admit it, but I’ve done more than my share of misbehaving. God in heaven probably doesn’t smile at my “personality,” but He’s sure let me live a lot longer than I’ve deserved, and tolerated a lot more than any person should have ever expected.
As for Sami, I took him to the vet last week. Just a man-to-man trip, me and the little criminal cat. He screamed the entire trip. So I reminded little Sambo of every lamp I’ve had to repair or replace. Of the chair in my office that’s torn to tatters. Of the early morning demands that SOMEONE NEEDS TO GET UP AND FEED THE KITTY.
And then I told the vet to cut his personality off.
For a week, Sami acted like we’d half killed him. Melody said it’s because men don’t take pain well, and that she hopes the surgery doesn’t – and I’m not making this up – “take away his personality.” At the moment, a week removed from the crisis of his life, Sami is racing around the house, tormenting the dog, and giving serious thought to unrolling some toilet paper. It looks like there’s personality left to spare, and I think I hear my wife laughing again.
Ah, the amazing grace of a woman who loves cats.
And of a God who loves me.
Man's best friend. Mom's very best friend.
Something’s happened in the past year or so. Very gradually, Kelsey has become a mamma’s dog.
Maybe I should start with my friend Bobby. Years ago, when I was first getting to know him, Bobby would often show up for a work project in his big white pick-up truck and his big yellow lab. Whatever Bobby was doing, that lab watched Bobby like a sentry, usually from the bed of that truck. If Bobby was cutting grass, that dog counted every lap. If Bobby was doing carpentry, you could count on a dog sitting in the back of that truck, watching the progress. The tailgate would be down, thereby giving the dog freedom to leave, but until Bobby gave permission, that dog just stayed put.
It was perfect fodder for a truck commercial, though the TV guys missed it. Roll the manly music, show a few scenes of Bobby cutting grass, building things, going places, with that dog and his truck by his side every mile of the way. And toward the end, the narrator with the sell-the-truck voice simply says, “Kind of hard to tell which one is man’s best friend, isn’t it?”
I don’t have a truck, and I sure don’t have a dog who’d patiently watch me fell trees in the forest if I had a truck.
Kelsey could sell make-up. Or kitchen appliances, maybe. She’d probably speak perfect English for a chance to pitch the benefits of air conditioning. She also likes plush carpet, dog biscuits, table scraps and someone who isn’t afraid to bend the rules.
Which explains, I think, why Kelsey has turned into my wife’s dog.
I should say this, first. Kelsey still likes me. She appreciates the back scratching, she obeys if I use the right voice, and she’ll even run beside my tractor if the weather’s not too hot and if there’s not an especially interesting movie on the Lifetime Channel.
But she has taken to looking at me with eyes of disdain when I insist on the rules being followed.
As a for instance, we had to have the carpets in our house cleaned earlier this year. Cost a lot of money, and a lot of trouble moving furniture in and out of rooms. The reason for three-year-old carpets needing a cleaning? Kelsey.
We live in a part of Georgia where red clay becomes one with your shoes or paws, and you’ve got to be careful what you track inside. Kelsey picked out half a dozen places where she likes to watch TV, and all of those places took on a glow of orange. Only professional cleaning could get the orange out, and when it was done, we agreed – my wife and I – that Kelsey would be banned from the carpet, and forced to lay on sheets, blankets, or a plush dog bed. She was also welcome to spend time on the hardwood floors.
Kelsey did not like the change in her lifestyle. Not one bit. She understood the new rule within minutes. She’s a smart dog. She simply has invested the last few months in seeing what she can get away with. The latest sign of rebellion is the way she lays on her blanket in our bedroom. Yes, she’s on the blanket. With her paws and nose on the carpet.
Kelsey and I both knew this would happen. I’m still enforcing the “out-of-date” rules that dogs lay on dog beds. Mom is not. At least not all the time. It’s not uncommon for the two of them to curl up and watch a good movie together, she on the bed, she on the carpet, with at least one of them sipping a cup of coffee.
So what's the point? The point is, dog beds are comfortable. They're even more comfortable than carpet. But there's something about the forbidden carpet in all of our lives that makes it look like the best place in the world to be.
For Kelsey, that's going to be forbidden carpet. For you? Maybe a forbidden person. Could be an illegal practice. Could even be some kind of food the doctor said was off limits. And this desire we seem to have for forbidden carpet is nothing new. As soon as God set out Ten Rules on stone, the entire community of God's people set out to break all Ten Rules, plus the stones themselves.
And I'm a little ill at Kelsey, to tell you the truth. She seems to have no appreciation at all for the life she's got. The last two dogs we had? They lived outside, no matter what the weather. They never got to watch TV, rarely went for rides in the car, and they certainly never dreamed of having their own web page. And this dog is pouting because we've restricted her to dog beds?
I suspect Kelsey isn't the only creature who's ever drawn a frown from The Master. Even though we act like we deserve the very best in life, truth is, Jesus never promised us thick carpet, air conditioning or daily dog biscuits. In fact, he actually challenged people to a very difficult lifestyle. “Pick up your cross and follow me,” was one of his favorite lines designed to weed out the fans from the followers.
So now I'm stuck with a Momma's Dog.
I know Bobby’s dog in the back of the truck probably wasn’t a perfect dog, but that’s the image I’ve always had for what a dog’s supposed to do. If you’re outside, he’s outside. If you’re working, the dog’s working. Fishing? Give the dog a pole. Taking a walk? She’s by your side, never once pulling on the leash.
“Follow me,” Jesus said. “Everywhere I go. Whatever I do. Don’t pull. Don’t yank. Don’t look longingly at the house like a few hours in 85-degree heat might be too much to bear today. If I tell you to stay off the carpet, don’t even come close to the carpet. Don’t forget who you are. You’re not in charge. You’re a dog, for crying out loud. I’m the Master. Wag your tail at all of this and just be glad that you’ve got such an incredibly good life.”
OK, so I’m a little loose with the paraphrase. Maybe even a lot loose. But a dog is supposed to be man’s best friend. A follower of Christ is supposed to be 100-percent committed to Jesus, without exception.
So stay off the carpet.
And wag your tail at the splendid opportunity to follow your Master today.
If you've made it this far ...
Maybe you'd like to know that Kelsey is very much alive.
For the moment.
I put it that way because she did something that really irritated me this morning, and I gave serious though to her demise.
But grace prevaled.
I wonder how often the same words have been written about me, in heaven? Check back from time to time, and I'll be glad to share something else my dog is teaching me about my God.
Got a comment? E-mail your thoughts to acook@shirleyhills.org. And thanks for dropping by.
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