Charlie is a rescue. That is, we adopted him from the local animal shelter in Greensburg. Someone called the local dog catcher because this little blonde mutt was scavenging in the trash.
Charlie was not neutered. He did not have a micro-chip tracking device. He had no collar or tags. The shelter vet estimated him to be about two years old.
How on earth did this gorgeous dog get to be two years old without someone caring for him? No one wanted this adorable friendly little pup? Really?
I know there are many who are flabbergasted by this, but everyday people lose their pets. Some pets run away, some are left behind, and some pets are even dumped in the hopes that someone else will care for them. Why do people do this?
There are thousands of reasons why a person can no longer keep a pet. In some cases the care of a pet becomes too much for them. High maintenance pets through illness or bad behavior can complicate life in ways we weren’t expecting. Sometimes, though, its our own selfishness that gets in the way.
What I find most interesting, though, is that folks get really upset when they hear about this happening to animals, but don’t we sometimes do this to people?
Are there people in your life that you have thrown away? Ones that you can’t seem to get along with? What of the people we don’t know that we throw away: the poor, the elderly, the sick? Do we ignore those who are struggling in our midst?
I know that it is difficult to see these things. The norms of our society are that a person should help himself; that people should work and earn their portion. What if a person can’t earn their portion, though, because of illness, physical or mental? What if they haven’t been taught how to fend for themselves? What if, like Charlie, they learned the wrong way to make ends meet?
We make lots of excuses for why we don’t have to be generous and loving, but that isn’t how Jesus teaches us to be. What are we doing in church every week if we never take any part of the Gospel out of the building with us?
Living as a disciple of Jesus doesn’t mean you have to be some kind of cheesy “church-lady” fake-out. It means that you look outside yourself, and as that one president said, ask what you can do for others. It means that you are thankful for what you have instead of constantly seeking more. It also means that some-times you have to bury the hatchet and love someone in spite of the fact that they have wronged you. It means you give second chances.
Jesus shows us all of this time and again if we would just listen to the Gospels. He reached out to those in need, he did not turn them away. He healed them and fed them. He literally showed us how to love and evangelize.
I don’t know about you, but the person that drives me most nuts is the hypocrite. You know, the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do type. That’s the opposite of who Christ was. He did all of the things he told us to do. That’s why he could even give his life for us. He did it to show us the love of God.
That’s the Good News. We can be excited to share it with others because God loves us all that much. Not the lim-ited way we love each other but with fullness and abundance.
Instead of throwing each other away because we feel re-jected and un-loved, perhaps we could give ourselves one more chance. Maybe we could all benefit by letting a stray into our lives. That stray might even be ourselves.
Charlie was a stray be-cause someone threw him away, but because of that I have been blessed with the most wonderful dog. Right, Charlie?
-Christy Cabaniss
