It’s been well-said that a dog is man’s best friend, and that a dog is God’s tangible expression of unconditional love. I have found that to be true during the most difficult season of my life, and though I am content in this season of life to be a "doggie grampa," Delilah, our late-great family Boxer, has never been far from my mind.
Dreams can be a mish-mash of the past and present, of things being processed or unresolved, and just plain unexplainable and random weirdness. But when you put yourself to sleep at night asking for God to speak even in the midst of rest, the mish-mash can be eye-opening the next morning…
…It was a familiar scene of happy chaos. The clock had been turned back 20 years to a typical weekend night of teens descending upon our house, unannounced but welcome, to hang out with my daughter and son. And as she often was, Delilah was in the midst of it all, wagging her knob of a tail and barking up a happy storm, following people around. But when the barking didn’t stop and she started jumping on people in excitement, I remember turning to her with upraised voice and finger, “No!”
Delilah immediately sat in obedience (I could tell this was a dream), but what came next totally surprised me. I remember feeling great compassion and love for this dear friend. It was overpowering. All the other noise of the dream was on mute. And as I was patting her, a bit more weirdness—I clearly heard an off-camera voice speaking “Psalm 103, Psalm 104!” But Psalm 103 was what I seemed to be paying attention to…
When I got up the next morning, I was thinking of that crazy dream and decided, “oh, what the heck” and turned to Psalm 103 to see if maybe Delilah was there. What stopped me in my tracks was not “seeing” Delilah there, but her Master:
“The Lord is merciful, compassionate and loving, slow to become angry and full of constant love…As high as the sky is above the earth, so great is His love for those who honor (obey) Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our sins from us. As a father is kind to his children, so the Lord is kind to those who honor Him. He knows what we are made of; He remembers that we are dust.”—Psalm 103:8, 11-14
Some things you never outgrow, like wondering if God reaches a patience limit with our repeated screw ups of attitude and action in spite of wanting to always walk the narrow road. And just maybe, that crazy mish-mash of a dream was a reassuring message that God’s ways are not our ways and that though dogs are wonderful, He doesn’t need one to remind us of what unconditional Love really looks like.
We just need to remember to be like Delilah and “sit” when we hear or sense “No!” and feel the Love, and get up and keep going (tail-wagging optional).
“Do you believe that the God of Jesus loves you beyond worthiness and unworthiness, beyond fidelity and infidelity? That He loves you in the morning sun and in the evening rain? That He loves you when your intellect denies it, your emotions refuse it, your whole being rejects it? Do you believe that God loves without condition or reservation and loves you this moment as you are and not as you should be?...
He has a single relentless stance toward us:
He loves us.”—Brennan Manning
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