I want you to meet my dogs Oakley and Oscar. Oscar is the white and black Spaniel, Collie, Drever mix and Oakley is a Rhodesian Ridgeback, Shepherd, Great Dane mix. These are amazing dogs. They are low-key and have fun personalities. Oakley in particular loves to play, is very low energy, he rarely barks and best of all, he thinks he is a lap dog. It’s amazing when he’s feeling cuddly on a cold day. Currently, however, he has a pulled muscle. He does not just have a pulled muscle, but it is his right front leg that has the pulled muscle. Dogs get a lot of action on all 4’s, but the front legs seem to be his most important/most used. He cannot do anything without feeling pain right now.
Earlier today, he came up to me and started whimpering. I did what any dog lover would do and scooped him up (all 84 pounds of him), pet him softly and started to whisper “hey Oaks, it’s going to be okay”. The only issue being that dogs cannot understand the spoken language, but that is not what he needed was it? The whimpering turned into a yelp and I started to drift in my thoughts…
I was watching the TV Show Glee (you know I was), where Finn and Quinn tell Quinn’s parents about the fact that she is pregnant. She says in there all she wants is her dad to hold her and tell her everything is going to be okay. I watched that episode (Season 1 episode 12, I believe?) just before my dog came up to me whimpering and harboring his front leg. Now, I’m not a father currently. I am a youth pastor, and have students by the boat loads whom I care for immensely. I have not had the opportunity to hug my own child and tell them everything is going to be okay but today I got a chance to do it for my dog. Once more, I have sat with students when the world is coming down all around them and given them a hug and told them everything would be okay. But when I think about doing that for my own child, I begin to understand the lengths I would go to make sure everything real was going to be okay.
This got me thinking further. How often do we come to God, whimpering or yelping about something in our life that is hurting? In life, you have choices and consequences. Rick Warren said once that “you do not get to choose the consequences, just the choices”. I can recall plenty of times in my own life where I sat down seeking God, asking/praying to have him hold me and take away the pain I was feeling. It felt like more than I could handle. I recall plenty of those times where I could feel only what I know to be the warmth of an embrace. So I ask, in those times, how can any of us understand God’s words? When all we want is a word but all we need is to know that He is taking care of it and that everything really will be okay. You see, we do not get the luxury of seeing what He sees. We do not get that perspective. Like Oakley and his leg, some things take time to heal properly and the only way we can address the wound is to hold out and hear someone say “Hey, it’s going to be okay”. But I ask you, is it the words or the warmth of the embrace that make you feel this way? For my dog, it was the fact that I was holding him. For me, it has been the warmth.
I bet this is how God feels sometimes. He sees the pain, knows that we just need to hold out for a little longer and that everything is going to be okay. He sits us down and holds us and comforts us by allowing people into our lives. And to imagine him loving me more than I love students, my dog, and more than I will love any children I ever have is absolutely humbling to me.
So keep holding on. The pain is tough, and it hurts. Suffering is not enjoyable but the end will justify the pain it took to get us there. Keep holding on.
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Food for thought: What if we trusted God to make sure everything would be okay instead of trusting God to dull the pain we are feeling due to a choice we may or may not have made?
leadershape 