If you’re like me, and you have been around dogs most of your life, then you already know God has a way of teaching us things about Himself through our canine companions. Different dogs mean different things to us at certain times in our lives. If we look, we can see a reflection of God’s character in every creature He’s created.

A German Shepherd named Amber was the dog of Joseph and Erin’s childhood. She was the dog we took hiking in the mountains, who fetched sticks from lakes, who caught snowballs in her mouth, and the reluctant subject sitting with the family for a picture on the annual Christmas card. She was afraid of thunder and lightning, but fearless in the face of deliverymen. She was the dog of the empty nest as my kids left for college.

Ironically, we both developed arthritis at the same time! And if I am honest about the perils of aging, we both got kind of deaf and lost our good vision at the same time, too. As she was failing, I had the briefest of dreams one night. It was just a snippet, and I woke up.  But in the dream, she was swimming happily in a lake. The next morning, when I found her lying still, way too still, on the kitchen floor, I knew I had lost a treasured friend.

Amber was a gift from God. She was what I needed at a certain season in my life, and even in the end of that season, God showed me mercy and comfort. Ecclesiastes 3:1 “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die.”

John 3:16 talks about God so loving the world that He gave.  God is a giver, but gifts from God are different than our gifts. God owns everything. Everything. Including pets. He alone decides the beginning and the end. When we give gifts, we mean for people to keep them and do as they please. God, on the other hand, deals with us from a place of purpose and love. He entrusts, He loans, He teaches.

In Matthew 25:14, Jesus tells a parable about God’s Kingdom where a master gives differing talents to each of three servants with the expectation that they will do something profitable with them before he returns. In the parable, the one servant that was considered wicked was the one who buried his talent. He kept it. He didn’t use it. He lacked the understanding that it truly belonged to the Master, and with its loan came certain responsibilities. God invites us to have a relationship with Him through the things (or creatures) He entrusts to our care. God invites us to labor with Him. He acts on principles, not our rules or expectations.

It was a gentler goodbye to let Amber go after 12 years as her health began to fail.  But what if she was a young dog, and I thought it was way too soon? That happened, too. Our dog before Amber was a 100-pound Labrador so light in color he was almost white. Boxy and muscular, when I walked him, cars would stop on the street, and people would yell out what a good-looking dog he was. Wimsey looked the picture of health, but he had a genetic condition called EIC – or exercise induced collapse.

And collapse he did one day, dying suddenly when he was three and a half years old. Doesn’t matter the circumstance; all that I have is His. We know this in principle, but it becomes a challenge each time we separate with some thing or some one we love. Psalm 24:1-2 says, “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.”

There are two takeaways for me from all this.

2. When I feel anxiety, it’s usually about feeling out of control and fearing loss. With that feeling, I know for a fact that I have lost touch with the reality that all things are God’s. The evil servant in the  parable told the master that he was afraid of him which is why he hid the talent. So anytime you feel fear and a type of emotional paralysis, let a bell go off in your head. This is not God. This is not His kingdom. This is not profitable.Fight that thought, so you do not become like the unprofitable servant. If you are His, if all you have is His, you can’t lose what you do not own. Trust God in your circumstances. I try to imagine what it would be like if this trouble was happening to someone else. Sure I would care, but I would not fall to pieces. If I can match that emotion, I know I am getting away from thinking it’s mine to knowing it’s God’s.
3. If God is a giver, determine to be one, too. The profitable servants in the parable took what God gave them and did something with it. Search out ways to be like God by taking care of other people. Mark 12:31-32 says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.”  Jesus summed it up that concisely. These two commandments are our life if we say we follow Jesus.

The spiritual life and the physical life around us is not as separated as we think. Because God loves us, He uses all the things around us to teach us of Himself. Do we look for it? Do we thank Him for it? Do we accept His ways even if we need to say we don’t understand them – yet? I have found that through animals we learn of death and life, suffering and endurance, love and patience. I still miss Amber. It’s been a year and a half and I only now feel ready to tell her story. God has graciously allowed me a lively and ridiculous puppy since then, but that is a tale for another day.

– Jill

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