Lost Dogs and Half a Mustard Seed
Psalm 28:1-2
"To you, O Lord, I call; my rock, be not deaf to me, lest, if you be silent to me,I become like those who go down to the pit. Hear the voice of my pleas for mercy,when I cry to you for help,when I lift up my hands toward your most holy sanctuary."
We serve a faithful God who is involved and interested in every detail of our lives. He is even concerned about our dogs. My dog "Cheech" ran away Saturday afternoon. Oh, the heartache!! I love this dog! As I was looking to God to try and find words to pray, I came across Psalm 28. I asked God to hear my pleas for mercy--I desperately wanted my dog back.
As we searched all day Sunday, our hope in finding her was slim. I kept going back to Psalm 28: "Hear the voice of my pleas for mercy, when I cry to you for help..." In Luke 17, Jesus tells the disciples that if they had faith the size of a mustard seed, they could move mountains. Here was a serious challenge to how I viewed prayer, how I trusted God, how great I thought my faith was. Did I believe that God would answer a prayer for a lost dog to return? Did I need to accept the fact that this was a lost cause, and needed to set my heart to move on? Where was my faith and patience? Psalm 28 kept popping back into my head, and with it came hope and trust in a God who is faithful to answer.
I came home Monday afternoon, depressed because I still hadn't heard any news about Cheech. As I walked up to the house, my wife Sam greets me with Cheech in her arms!! What was lost has now been found!! It was surreal! Here was a miracle, an answer to prayer, evidence of God's grace and kindness in action in my life. I was rendered speechless at the work of God in my life.
"Blessed be the Lord! For he has heard the voice of my pleas for mercy.
The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped;
my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him."
Psalm 28:6-7
Blessed be the Lord! for he has heard my pleas for mercy! I am in greater awe of a mighty God who deals with us so gently, who teaches us, encourages us, helps us, protects us and saves us. In the 48 hours of searching, I learned a lot about the power of prayer and allowing the Holy Spirit to shape those prayers and our hearts. If I can offer any encouragement to you in this, it is that God is interested in the specifics of our lives; he loves to hear the details when we pray. And nothing is too "outside of the box" for Him to work with, to shape our hearts, our prayers, and our faith into his perfect will.
"Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name..."
posted by Mr. Purdy at
7:48 AM
2 Comments:
this is great! Dude, the thing is...this is VERY theologically deep and asks some great questions. Not just about a dog named after a comedian from the 80's that liked the hash...but it asks GREAT questions about what we think about God and what's important to Him. AND, what we think about God when the stuff that seems important to us that we WANT, doesn't work out. How might have your picture of God been different if Cheech was still missing? Would God still care about those details?
And by the way....i'm definitely not smart.
I would imagine that the way I picture the Lord would change only in the sense that it would show me another facet to how He relates to me(us) in prayer.It's been said,
"sometimes he says go...others no."
So it would be another step in the process of spiritual development (sanctification), and I would accept a loss as part of God's divine plan for my life. And that's where I found it easier to get over losing my beloved pet. But, if it was my soon-to-be child that we lost...well, that would be exponentially different. At this stage in my commitment to Jesus, I notice a difference in how I can take the good with the bad. there's still TONS of frustration, cyncism, and selfish wants, but the Lord has always gently guided me through those attitudes and trials and transformed me by the "renewal of my heart." So, I have seen evidences of His grace REPEATEDLY in my life, so I trust him.
God is concerned about the details. I mean, he knows our hearts, has known us before the foundations of the world, has formed us in the innermost parts; how couldn't he be interested in the details. For me, this was a stretch of faith, discipline in prayer and a reminder of hope in Christ.
Thanks for the encouragement. And, Cheech is short for "Chi Chi", like the golfer. She does have a Spanish accent despite being German. Weird ;)
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