Just Another Calm Evening...

Talking about “taste and see” (Psalm 34:8), the other evening my wife and I had finished dinner and had finally settled down on the couch to watch a movie (this seems to be the one time each day that I can relax after all the activities of the day).  After a few moments I looked around to see where the dog was and I noticed that she was contentedly lying on the floor in front of the screen door leading out to our small side patio. 

Sometime later I caught a little movement out of the side of my eye and as I turned I witnessed the dog quietly, but yet intently looking outside.  Suddenly, in what seemed like the blink of the eye, she reached out with her paw, hit the screen door, slid it open and leaped outside.  Knowing that something was amiss, I quickly ended my time of relaxation and flew up and out after her only to observe that she had grabbed a fairly good size rat that had creped in under the front fence of our patio!   The little critter was screaming like a banshee and the dog was intent on finishing her task!  At one point the dog dropped the rat only to grab it with renewed fervor. 

Not knowing what the rat may be carrying or where it may have been, I did not want Mandie to be munching on it, so I reached out to take hold of her and succeeded by grabbing the last line of defense… her big black tail!  As I held on for dear life and hollered for her to release the varmint, she responded in obedience and dropped it.  The totally freaked out critter made a beeline for a small pile of branches I had temporarily placed in the patio and then scuttled under my neighbor’s fence.  I was a little shook up and didn’t know whether to reprimand the dog, who was standing there looking at me with a very happy and accomplished look on her face, or to reward her with a Milkbone dog biscuit for a job well done?  After I looked her over to make sure that she was okay, I did what I thought was best and gave her the bone!  After all, I’ve been fighting a battle over the last 2 years to rid the area of rats and I am sure that she thought that she was just doing her part!

As I thought about that whole experience from Monday night, I considered how we humans will sometimes also grab hold of things that might be wrong and/or unpleasant to the taste of our Christian beliefs.  Many times our reactions to what we did cause us to come under personal condemnation as we think about how stupid or dumb our actions might have been.  But while we might tend to berate ourselves, I think that God tends to respond like I did with Mandie. 

I Peter 1:3 encourages us to “Praise the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ!  God has given us a new birth because of his great mercy…” (God’s Word ©)  The key words here are “great mercy!”  In times when we may have acted too quickly without a lot of thought, His great mercy, I believe, will cause Him to look at us with loving eyes, as He checks us out to make sure that we are okay, and then reward us with His forgiveness and a gentle loving pat on the head.  And just like I now chuckle at the whole event with the dog, I believe that God does the same with us in the little similar events that we experience in our lives.

After all, “God is love.”  (I John 4:8 KJV)  How else would you expect Him to respond?  Don’t be so hard on yourselves!  Have a terrific day.  Stay in tune to His Word and keep asking yourself… “What am I expecting today?”