I have a puppy! She is a chocolate lab and we named her Clair(that's short for Chocolate 'Eclair). We've had her for a few months now and I have fallen in love with this bundle of love and joy!
From the moment Clair wakes up in the morning she is a boundless mass of energy. She leaps from her kennel and bounds down the stairs with two barks, hits the tile floor sliding into the lazy boy and making the slippery turn to head into the kitchen in search of her morning breakfast. However, she is redirected to the back door to head out to her morning piddle...then back in and back to the food bowl.
and sniffing out any tidbit of a morsel that may have escaped the confines of her food bowl, she then heads to the back door to be let back out to finish her morning "business".
We are so proud that she has this routine down pat. "What a good girl," we say to her as she comes back into the house...and it is from that moment on that the whole "good girl" persona seems to be "gone with the wind" as she rushes about looking for that which must be fully destroyed..uhm, I mean...explored.
Now puppies are a bit like toddlers, as they go about exploring everything ends up in their mouths. Clair has now become well acquainted with the words, "no", "quit", "put that down", and "spit it out...NOW", oh... and "that's my shoe, thank you for bringing it to me but I would rather you had left it in the spot by the door".
This morning it occurred to me, as I was yelling once again, "Clair...where are you and what are you into this time?", that I am a bit like my puppy...and maybe you are too. You see, Clair likes to please us and she is a very loving puppy, but she has a tendency to test every boundary that we put into place. Some things she learns rather quickly, but others...we are still working on.
She is a work in progress. Aren't we too a work in progress?
God in His loving kindness has set boundaries for us. He created us and knows what is best for us. Some of those boundaries aren't really hard for us to abide by...I mean most of the Ten Commandments are easy to keep aren't they? After all, I've never killed anyone. But there are those things that I know God asks of me that I don't always follow through with. How about you?
Like Clair has found...some of the bad things we do are well...just plain fun...but the end result is well...not fun.
Obedience is a hard lesson to learn.
When Clair is being obedient she is anxiously waiting at my feet either for her reward, a loving word, and a hug, or she is waiting for the next command. When she is not being obedient, she is so busy getting into trouble she misses out on the reward and instead suffers the consequences of her actions.
Sound familiar? I thought so too!!
I want to be known as one sitting at the feet of my Master, anxiously awaiting my reward, a loving embrace, and looking forward to the next command.
I want to have a heart that is captivated by His voice and His love!!
How about you?
