Article
A Dog Story
July 5, 2019
Almost, I didn’t read the article. I just don’t get into stories about pets. As a child, I loved stories about animals and esteemed, “Where the Red Fern Grows,” as a literary classic. I think my current disdain comes from a reactionary disgust with a pop-culture that humanizes animals and treats relationships with animals on par with those with humans (Admittedly, many pets are more agreeable than many humans.). I certainly do not begrudge or demean anyone who has great affection for a pet or derives great pleasure or companionship from having one. Perhaps, what I feel is caused simply by the contemporary, overwhelming inundation of pet-lauding in movies, conversations, and social media. Whatever the case, I felt an aversion to reading this dog story. But I did. And, am glad I did.
I will skip the details of the main plot and share what particularly intrigued me: The human in the story, seeking help with weight loss, had been advised by the doctor he had visited to adopt a dog. Walking the dog would be an incentive to exercise. From a shelter, the human rescued a dog that had been neglected and left mostly on its own in its owner’s backyard. The dog was overweight, out of shape, and swollen in its joints. The walks began. These had a life-changing effect on human and dog. One day on their walk, they visited a park neither had been to before. It was along a creek with a beautiful pond and a background of mountains.
Suddenly, the dog uncharacteristically began to strain at his leash, trying to run deeper into the park. The human started thinking of the dog’s past life. The dog was now middle-aged, dog year-wise, and had spent his whole life caged, fenced, or leashed. On impulse, the human reached down and unsnapped the leash from the dog’s collar. The dog took off like a racehorse out of the gate. He flew down the trail and never slowed when he reached the pond. He launched himself through the air and glided about seven feet over the water’s surface before splashing down. He swam so excitedly back to shore that the front of his body was lifted high out of the water. He ran back to his owner and shook water all over him and then ran back to jump into the pond again. He repeated this eight times before his human was able to get him to stop and rest.
The dog was panting laboriously, but his eyes were twinkling with joy, and his mouth was smiling around his dangling tongue. The dog had simply enjoyed being set free. Bondage is devastating to the spirit, even a dog’s spirit. Freedom is exhilarating. In my mind’s eye, I watched the dog launch himself through the air into the pond and saw its joy.
As the scene repeated itself, I began to think of the many who in the words of Scripture have been “all their lives subject to bondage.”(Hebrews 2:15) Theirs is a bondage of soul, spirit, and mind. What a wonderful joy they would experience if they would but let Christ set them free. There is no joy like the freedom of spirit to soar through the air of forgiveness and plunge in the waters of grace and run with the abandonment of a soul with which all is well. The reason for the dog’s exhilaration was something a dog could never think or articulate: The thrill came from experiencing both the enjoyment of freedom and the freedom to enjoy. On the leash, he was not only not free, but he was also unable to enjoy the park and pond around him.
People who are bound in spirit do not know the joy of a free spirit. They are also not free to enjoy the people, events, things of life around them. As certainly as the human was capable of reaching down and undoing the clasp that connected the limiting leash to the dog’s collar to set it free, and as the human was evidently willing to do so, Jesus Christ is capable of reaching down and loosing a person’s heart from what binds it. And, He is willing to do so. If you allow Jesus to set you free, the dog might not be the only one running, leaping, and smiling.
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