Safe at Home

It was a cold Fall Saturday at my house. As I laid in the bed I started going over in my head what all I wanted to get accomplished. We have some yard work that needs to be done and then I wanted to clean the house and I wanted to get everything done in time to watch THE game. There are a few things that are taken seriously in my house...(1) church; (2) rules; and (3) ALABAMA football! I rolled out of bed and started walking towards the living room when I realized it felt awfully cold in the house. I opened the front door, slipped open the glass door and felt the frigid wind blow in on me. Brrrrr.....it was cold! The weather man said that we would have an icy north wind on Saturday but you know I don’t understand all that meteorologist talk and just wish they would say during their forecast, "Lori, it will be VERY cold outside this weekend, don’t plan on doing anything outside!" That, I would understand.

I slammed the door shut, ran to the closet and got a blanket and bundled up in the recliner. Shane came through and I told him how cold it was outside and before I could finish my long, drawn out description of our completely frigid morning, Gabe came dragging into the living room. After a few minutes Shane told Gabe to go feed Chyna and Bear (our dogs). Chyna is an 8 year old American Bulldog and has seen her better days. She is slow moving, sleeps pretty much all day and simply lays by the fence to warn potential intruders that she is there because she just don’t have the energy to bark and cause a ruckus like she used to. Bear, well, he’s a 6 month old mut. He is part German Shepard and part Black Lab. He is one of those Wal-Mart finds. I had gone to buy groceries one day and as I came out and was putting the groceries in the truck this man was parked a few spots down with these puppies in the bed of his truck and I just couldn’t pass them up. I batted my big brown eyes at Shane and did the infamous "Plllllleeeeeeeaaaasssseeeee????" to which he couldn’t turn down and so that is how Bear came about.

Gabe bolted out the front door to retrieve the dog food bowls, raced in the laundry room, filled each bowl up with the precise amount of food and ran back out the front door. Gabe don’t slowly do anything. If you give him some instructions he is on it! Full speed ahead. He went from crawling to running and I think he only learned to actually slow down and walk when he started school and he had no other choice but to walk. After a few minutes Gabe comes back in the house with a frightened look on his face. "Daddy!" he exclaimed. "The front gate is open and Bear is gone!" Shane got up and peaked out the glass door and sure enough our front gate was laying on the ground. We don’t know if the wind knocked it over, if some mischievous kids pushed it over or exactly how it had been knocked down but sure enough it was laying on the ground and Bear was gone. Shane stood on the porch whistling and calling "Bear! Bear!" Nothing. No sign of him. My boys came in the house, threw on some warm clothes and jackets and off they went. They walked up and down the roads around our house calling for Bear and looking but came home empty handed.

As the day continued on we all took turns peeking outside looking for him, hoping to see him standing at the gate but almost knowing he wouldn’t be there. As a puppy we all had resigned to the fact that he was probably long gone. He was too young to be out alone, he had never been outside our fenced in yard and probably would have no clue how to get home, he is so small and there are so many bigger dogs in our neighborhood and he is just so friendly he wouldn’t understand the ramification of snooping in another dog’s yard. And then there was the dreaded thought of living on a busy road that he had been hit.

As the day ended and night began to fall the temperature kept dropping and when I say it got cold outside....it got bone chilling cold. Chyna is so old that Shane had made her a bed in our shed out back to sleep so that she would be out of the wind and around 8:00 he went outside to walk her and feed her. As she snorted while eating her food, Shane looked up and saw a black figure walking back and forth near the gate. As he neared the middle of the driveway he said "Bear, is that you?" and about that time he saw something jumping up and down and immediately he knew it was Bear. God created that dog with frog legs for hind legs because he jumps higher than any dog I have ever seen! Shane ran out to the gate , flung it open and let him in. He came flying into the yard jumping around, licking Shane and just so happy to be home. Shane knocked on the window a few times and as I opened the door I saw him. I started yelling "Bear’s back!" Everybody ran outside petting him and loving on him and checking him over to make sure he wasn’t hurt. I started telling Shane that I wondered what sort of adventure he had been on. "I bet if that dog could talk he would have one more of a story to tell us!" I said. About that time, Bear came over to me, gave me kisses, sat down in between my feet like he always does and sighed. He had a sense of relief about him. It was as if he was saying, "I’m home!"

As always, this got me thinking. I wonder if God feels the same way about us. He walks up and down the road calling our names, tugging at our hearts, peeking out the door and windows just waiting on us to come home. He knows it is a tough ole world out there and that there is danger at every turn and he knows how safe we would be if we would just come home to the safety of his "fence." Luke 15 is the story of the prodical son. In verse 20 he says ... "but while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him..." That one verse gives me a lot of comfort. No matter what I have ever done in my life, the moment I just caught my breath, ran (and I mean I ran...almost knocked a man at the end of the pew down so I could get out) down the aisle to Brother John (my wonderful pastor) and took his hand and told him that I was a sinner and wanted salvation from my guilt and shame, God was standing there opening the fence to let me in. He looked in my eyes and said "Child, I know you were lost and I often thought you would never find your way home but here you are!" and he threw his arms around me with a smile on his face. Do you have that relief of knowing you are safe at home?