This morning I gave a hug to a tearful tennis student, whose golden retriever died on Sunday. He always brought Della to tennis class and the sweet bond between the two was obvious. It carried me back to the death of my 15-year-old Lab a little over a year ago, as the wound still remains. Though I don’t know where or when the term was coined, a dog is referred to as “man’s best friend.” That’s a step up from the fact that “diamonds are a girl’s best friend,” regardless of the connection to Marilyn Monroe. With an estimated 400 million dogs in the world performing such tasks as hunting, herding, search and rescue, caring for the handicapped, protection, assisting police and more simply, companionship, dogs have become a focus of our culture. I can attest to the enjoyment I get out of my silly Labrador.
God gave man dominion over the animals, but God still wants us to treat His creation well:
4 “You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain. Deuteronomy 25:4
10 A righteous man regards the life of his animal,
But the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. Proverbs 12:10
Yet, God doesn’t want us choosing animals over people. PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has become prevalent in our society, and while the idea is great, the people involved sure take it to an extreme. Others, who grasp the upside-down nature of caring for an animal, but ignoring a person, have their own group called PETA (People Eating Tasty Animals)! The truth is, God wants us to love our neighbors as ourselves. With man’s biggest hurdle being his own pride, man certainly doesn’t have trouble loving himself. Yet when we begin to love our neighbors, and even our enemies, with that same love, lives can be changed.
Being single, I have a tendency to put an emphasis on my dog. She certainly is spoiled, and by the proverb listed above, I am sure God sees how sweetly I regard the life of this dog He has entrusted me with. Yet while the dog has a sweet soul and unique personality, God has not destined that dog with an eternal spirit (at least that is not expressed in the Bible). Many Christians, including myself, would love to see their pets beside them in heaven. Yet I know that God will give me everything I need to be joyous for all of eternity. I just don’t know what I will need, but God does. In the meantime, He can teach me about unconditional love from my dog, who loves me no matter what. That is one of the benefits of man’s best friend. A friend mentioned to me today that if you lock your dog in your trunk, he is glad to see you when you open the trunk. If you lock your wife in the trunk, when you open it, she is going to kill you! Through our dogs, we get to see a snippet of how God loves us! It’s sad that we sometimes can experience that more readily from our pets than we can from our friends and families! At the same time, our friends and families can feel the same about their own pet’s love compared to the love we are giving them.
There’s a lesson here for me, if not for anyone else, about focusing my love in a godly way on the people the Lord puts in my pathway on a daily basis. And I can continue to love Whitney, too, for God has given us enough love to go around! Don’t forget:
And above all things have fervent love for one another, for “love will cover a multitude of sins.”
1 Peter 4:8
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