Dig Dig Dig

Upon a recent trip to the bookstore, I found that the book at the top of the New York Times Best Sellers list for nonfiction is a story titled, Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog. I have not read the book, but its title would seem to give a fairly good idea of it contents. So if the number one selling nonfiction book is about nightmares in dealing with dogs, then people must like to hear stories about dealing with dogs, and so I have one of my own.

I got my mutt last summer from the SPCA, a Labrador retriever mix, she was 6 weeks old and I named her Molly. She is now about eight months old, and we have gotten past the housebreaking stage, with a minimal amount of accidents. No longer does she choose to relieve herself in the house while I am not looking. We have also gotten past the chewing stage, where everything in the house from three feet down is in danger of getting teeth marks and drool. Most would consider that to be the most aggravating stage to endure. I have taught her to sit, stay, and fetch. So you must be thinking that I am doing pretty well so far, but there is one thing that I just cannot seem to stop Molly from doing; and that is digging in the backyard.

I have heard and tried countless solutions, and if this story sparks more ideas and tips from people then I will probably try them too (assuming they are cost efficient). I have heard people say that you should simply fill the holes up with water and then she won't dig in them anymore. Problems with this...water evaporates, Molly doesn't mind getting muddy, and the clincher...even if it did work for those holes filled in with water, she just digs new ones. I have been told that dogs won't dig if there is pepper on the ground because they don't like it when it gets in their noses. Smart & Final carries big containers of ground pepper, and I went to get one. I filled in all the holes with fresh dirt, packed it down, and then put a nice thick layer of ground pepper in all the spots. Before I was even done putting the pepper down, I found Molly going over all the spots eating the dirt. I bet that dirt had a nice pepper taste to it, one that she considered to be very appetizing. Oh, and then she started digging again. I tried spraying her with the hose when I saw her starting to dig, and that stops her, but when she is by herself, there is no one to stop her. I tried giving her toys to play with and chew instead of digging, but she still digs. Lastly, I tried putting chicken wire down on the ground so that she couldn't dig. This would be very effective if I put it down over all of the yard, but that is way too much area to cover. Molly will just not stop the digging. Molly digs as if she is on a mission. She is persistent, and no matter how many things I try to do to stop her, she keeps digging. Perhaps digging is part of her identity, if you ask me it is.

Jesus was also on a mission when He left his throne on high and came here to be with us. His identity was the cross. It is what defined him more than anything else while He was here. It was his mission. Through that very cross He brought salvation to all who accept it. No matter what kind of obstacles people tried to put in front of him to stop him, He did not stop, He kept on the road to the cross. Satan tempted him, Pharisees tried to trick him, his disciples betrayed him, and everyone misunderstood him, but he kept on the road to the cross. He was mocked, stabbed, whipped, beaten, spit upon, tempted, called a blasphemer, betrayed, lied to, and misunderstood, but He never wavered on his sinless walk to the cross. We serve a mighty savior.

Just Say No

The office door to the church has had it problems recently. In fact, it got so bad that in order to close, it had to be violently slammed. Where I come from, a slammed door is a no-no (thanks Mom and Dad). On the other hand, several times people unaware of the present state of the door chose to close it gently, and while it may have appeared to be shut tightly, the door was simply putting on a facade. Any gentle nudge applied to the door would expose this facade, but oftentimes the door closer would be in too much of a rush to get out of the church and our poor church was left vulnerable (I suppose that a locked church door can be pretty symbolic of a church's inability to reach out to its community, but that is not where I am going with this).

For weeks I heard talk of someone coming in to fix this resistant door, but it just did not seem to be happening. I realize that sometimes you must be patient and allow for people to fit things into their schedules, but there came a point where I realized that if I had to hear the door slam one more time, I might become desensitized to it and all of my parents' teaching on door slamming would have been in vain. Plus, I realized that in order for me to fix the door I would need to buy a new tool, something that I jump at whenever I get the opportunity!

It took me about 10 minutes to restore the door to it's preliminary state, not a terribly huge or difficult task, but definately one that was a long time coming. Let me tell you, the sound of nothingness ringing through the office is music to my ears.

Scott, I think, is going through the same thing. He has a vision of our church's sound booth being a whole lot more than the sham it is in right now. Almost every work day for about two weeks now, he has been meeting and talking with people who have been promising to pull through to make the booth what it needs to be. I haven't seen any progress.

I suppose I could extend this idea further by pointing out all the times I hear people say directly to me that they will see me in church on Sunday, and then Sunday rolls around and I see no sign of them. I don't think that people intend this to be the case, but I fear that the world is suffering from severe flakititus (most common symptoms are talking big, delivering small, and being apathetic to the whole situation). James has something to say about this type of behavior, in v5.12 he writes, "But above all, my brethren, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath. But let your 'yes' be 'yes,' and your 'no,' 'no,' lest you fall into judgment." If you are too busy to do a favor or a job for someone, they would be much less annoyed if you simply said no, than if you said yes and then failed to follow through. Anyone care to help me rearrange the furniture in my house???