March 2018 Articles

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Spiritual Corner: Parable of Two Pups

Parable of Two Pups

God often uses the simplest, most every day things in our lives to speak to us, doesn’t He? I’m not sure why, probably because He knows how obsessed I am with my pups, but God seems to use them to illustrate spiritual things to me. If you don’t already know about my two dogs, I’ll give you a quick introduction. I have Charlie, who will be five in May. I adopted him almost 5 years ago, as a 2 month old from the West Ouachita Animal Shelter. He almost died from Canine Distemper, and is considered basically a miracle dog by his veterinarians. Charlie is a 75 pound Weimaraner, Great Dane, Black Lab, your guess is as good as mine, mix. He’s a gentle giant and my baby. My other dog is Rylie. We recently adopted her from 4paws in Ruston. She is a white pitt mix. She just turned one year old at the end of February. She’s a big baby as well, although more rebellious than Charlie. Anyways, back to the point of my story. A few weeks ago, I let the dogs outside to play. We have to keep Rylie on a long cable that she drags because she doesn’t always come very well and this way, if she tried to run away, we could grab the cable to reel her back in. So the dogs were out playing and I had to run inside quickly to do something. I stopped for a moment inside to watch the dogs’ reactions out the window. As soon as Charlie noticed I went back inside, he hurried up onto the front porch and sat in front of the glass door, staring inside, patiently looking for me. I remained just out of sight for a little bit, just to see if he would ever get tired of waiting and go back to playing, but he continued to wait patiently and diligently. While Charlie was waiting, I watched to see what Rylie would do. At first, she watched Charlie and then I could see a small temptation flicker across her face, when she hesitated in the yard and thought about wandering off to play. However, she shook away that idea and followed behind Charlie onto the porch and sat with him to wait on me as well. I finally came to the door and greeted both of them and we all went back outside to play.
At first glance, this seems like a very normal story. God allowed me to see some spiritual applications from it, though. You see, Charlie sees me as his master, just like we, as Christians, see God as our master. Charlie couldn’t bear for his master to be out of his sight. He never wanted to be too far away from me. Can we bear for God to be out of our sight? Do we ever allow ourselves to partake in activities that put us far away from God? Or do we pack our schedules so full that we are pushed far away from God? We need to have the strong desire that Charlie had for his master, for our master, the one, true God. We need to always desire for God to be completely visible in our sight and we must always want to be nearer, ever nearer to Him. Another thing that Charlie did was wait patiently and with longsuffering. No matter how long it was taking me to come back in his sight, he continued to wait for me. What about us? Do we wait on the LORD? I feel like I often pray to God or ask Him something, but if I don’t get an answer fairly quickly, I stop waiting or I get antsy. Charlie waited patiently for me and nothing was going to make him stop waiting on me. We need to be that way with God. We must wait on the LORD, just like it says in Psalm 37:7 to, “Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him”. God doesn’t always do everything according to our time schedule, but just like Charlie had faith that I would appear before him, we must have faith that God will appear before us as well, because He will. Lastly, there is a good comparison with Rylie and Charlie. Rylie hesitated at first and was tempted to just wander off and play. He illustrated someone who is tempted, but then resists the temptation. Rylie resisted the temptation to wander off and followed Charlie onto the porch to wait for her master. This is a good illustration of the importance of the company we keep. It says in 1st Corinthians 15:33, “Do not be misled: ‘bad company corrupts good character’”. So what if Charlie had decided to wander off and play? Well, then Rylie probably would have done the same thing. She was able to resist the temptation because her companion did. If we surround ourselves with Christian people, it will greatly help us to say “no” to the worldly temptations because we’ll have people in our lives saying “no” to them with us. I’m thankful that God chooses to use things like my sweet pups to help me spiritually. Just like Jesus spoke in parables to help the peoples’ understanding of his messages, I feel like God still does that today. So as you go about your day, look for signs of God in your daily life and interactions. God leaves messages for us all the time so let’s be proactive and strive to unearth some of those precious gems of encouragement.
--Dana Alexander