My beloved dog died last week. I know many of you can relate to the grief I’m feeling, having lost your own precious pets. I wrote the following chapter in the book Encourage to Faith some years ago. I thought it an appropriate homage to Tracker Boy…
I HAVE A LABRADOR retriever whose devotion exceeds that of any dog I’ve had. If I get up to go to the kitchen for a glass of water, he insists on pushing up from his comfortable spot by my chair and following me. I try to spare him the trouble by saying, “It’s okay, boy, wait here, I’ll be right back,” but I might as well be telling him to hold his breath. He just sighs, long and full—his signal that he has no other choice but to follow me. It is his manifest destiny. So off we go single file into the kitchen, where immediately he plops back down on the floor, just so he can be near to me for a few more precious seconds of his precious life. I step over him one minute later to make my way back to the den, and his routine repeats. As he’s gotten older, he lets out more of a protest groan than a sigh. “Why are you making me do this?” it means, but dutifully, always, he rises to follow—dee-doop-dee-doop. He’ll do this as many times as I decide to leave the room. I’ve tested it.
When I’m not tripping over him, my intuitive reaction is to feel sorry for him, though I shouldn’t. He lives to keep his eyes on me, to simply be in my presence. That makes him happy, and his nonstop adoration pleases me to no end. It downright melts my heart. I could tell of other lessons I’ve learned from my single-purposed dog, but they all amount to the same thing: complete devotion. That’s unquestionable, although I am aware his ability to love has limits. He is a dog after all, a good one, who knows I’m his ticket to table scraps, not to mention for shelter, and clothing if you count his collar. Even so, I have a sign on my refrigerator: “I wish I were as good a person as my Lab thinks I am.” It helps me keep my life in focus. I have a sign in my heart that does the same thing. It says: “I wish I were as devoted to Jesus as my Lab is to me.”
The Bible says, “God is love,” and, “We love, because He first loved us” (1 John 4:16,19). Therefore it follows: God is the source of all love, His character radiates love, and without Him there would be no love anywhere, anyhow, anytime. Some with a skeptical bent try to reassign this love we humans feel to nothing more than an evolutionary mechanism triggered to ensure survival of the species. To them the origin of love is pinging atoms.
Conversation in an atheist household:
Tommy: Do you love me, Father?
Father: Sure do, Tommy. I’m experiencing an elevated chemical brain reaction right now. I’d give it about a five—not quite as high as yesterday when you cleaned your room. But I’m having it, sure enough.
Kind of gets you right in the ol’ breadbasket, doesn’t it?
Others who leave God out of the equation dilute the concept of love by confusing it with a lot of substitutes that by themselves won’t ever fill the role: infatuation, affinity, service, kinship, companionship, and many more all come to mind. The confused set among us manufacture a counterfeit feeling from their inclinations and call it love. But this is just self-interest in a mask. “The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love” (1 John 4:8). How could they? You can’t conjure love out of thin air. A flame needs its oxygen. And man’s heart needs God if he is to love well; rather, if he is to love at all. I don’t intentionally avoid the love God has for me. I know better than to do that. But I do hide near the edges of its shadows at times. From there it’s hard to feel the enormity of God’s love. That’s why I don’t love as well as I could. Simple deduction.
Yet I am not discouraged. My journey into God’s heart is ultimately as inexorable as my Lab’s need to keep me in his sights. It is my natural inclination as God’s child to receive His love and radiate it back out, and I will follow Him through all eternity for that blessed purpose. But I’m in the present where my devotion is sometimes fickle and I can smother my love with the excuses I carry with me. I long to love God more, but how can I love Him when I’m still so broken? How can I love Him when I feel unworthy? How can I afford to love anything? For it would lay my soul bare.
I read the beautiful passage on love in First Corinthians and realize it not only confers my destiny, it describes God’s essential nature. He is all the enumerated aspects of love and more. As I come to know His heart, He will soften and conform mine. Oh, and how I need for His love to shape me till I put Him first, others next. I go last. And now I see the light—I resist the shaping I need because I well know that therein lies the ultimate demise of my flesh. I know because I feel it squirming too many times when I can’t be first.
For those stretches of time when I come out to the light and allow myself to love and be loved, my experiences prove that love is its own reward, love is a worthy risk. I have my good moments in loving others, and I have my struggling moments. Overall I’m inconsistent. Worse, I sometimes fail the most at being loving to those closest to me. I would run into a burning building to save a loved one, yet so often I struggle with the basics. There’s a deep-seated love that exists in me, yet in-between heroic feats, where does it go?
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” Jesus says (John 14:6). And His words open my eyes. I can no longer play the child and put on that I don’t know the way to God’s heart or what I find when I dwell there. I find Jesus. So I have come to a big-boy conclusion: instead of griping, “Why don’t I love more? Or feel the love of God more?” I need to take the first step of growing more in love with Jesus. And the way that happens is the same way I grow in my relationship with anyone—by spending time with them. I’m talking Labrador retriever time; anointing Jesus’ feet time (Luke 7:37-40).
And epiphany of epiphanies, I will learn to love others and receive the love of others in direct proportion to how much time I spend in intimate relationship with Jesus. This I accomplish through prayer, meditating on His Word, fasting from the buzz of the world, listening for His voice, walking with Him when I’m alone, and walking with Him when I’m with others. In short, learning to abide in Him in everything I do. Or as Brother Lawrence, the seventeenth-century Carmelite monk, called it, “practicing his presence.”
Today I take heart that through all the valleys of my inconsistencies I will eventually reach the summit. One day, every day I will experience love in its purist forms: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy…” (1 Corinthians, 13 NIV) Love goes on and on. And God, the Lover of lovers, is all of these; and we, His beloved children, are becoming them. It is inevitable, for love never fails. Just ask my Lab.
(Postscript to blog: Tracker was 13. And though I grieve, I do believe nothing will be lost that was given. In other words, God redeems all He gives to His beloved.)
I hope this encourages you today to better appreciate these loyal companions God has blessed us with.
Kevin Murray
© 2024 All rights reserved
Awesome Kev. I really hope Tracker is in Heaven. Louie Giglio says dogs are in Heaven because they bring so much joy to us. I hope he is right.
I am so very sad for your loss. Thank you for sharing God’s blessings. I believe one day we will be reunited with our pets. God is so good.💕🙏
Kevin,
As usual, you have touched my heart. We, too, had a Chocolate Lab at one time, given by me to my then-girlfriend (now wife of 23 years), apparently a “pre-seal the deal” effort on my part (in retrospect). We had just returned from seeing the The Lion King on Broadway, so we decided to name him “Simba”. When they pulled the AKC papers, lo and behold, his dad’s name was “PR’s Simba” (what are the odds?). Divine intervention? Who is to say?
When we had to put him down, I did not know that the vet did it right in front of you, so I ran out of the room, sat in the car and cried my eyes out (as my wife dutifully stayed with him to comfort him during his last moments).
There is no love like that of a dutiful animal, with dogs at the top of that list. May we be so inspired to act with unending love towards others, as our dogs do towards us, and as our Father in heaven does every single moment of every day with all of His precious children.
I know you will miss Tracker Boy, yet be comforted by all of the wonderful memories you shared with him.
Thank you Kevin, as always, for the reminder!
Gregg
Kevin, Sorry to hear about your loss. As I sit here in my study, my little man Bo lays on my feet. Also in my room I have the ashes of Grace and Tuffy. Growing up in Valdosta, Georgia with five brothers we had two dogs. Living close to our little Catholic church, we would ride our bikes to mass to serve as alterboys. One of our dogs, Bullet, would always follow and lay outside on the church’s front steps. I wake up in the morning and Bo is at my feet saying, “OK, where are we going this morning? You are so right about the devotion he gives and expects. My wife has a framed saying..”Acquiring a dog may be the only opportunity a human ever has to choose a relative.” I turn 80 in March. After growing two successful businesses in Atlanta, we have moved to St Simons Island. Needless to say, Bo was a nervous wreak with movers and boxes every where until we were settled. Now he has us back into his routine. I believe God gave us these dogs so that we could love and take care of eachother. As we do our families. gn PS: Your Dad, Tuffy, was my lawyer for many years. One of the smartest wonderful man I ever met. I hope he is doing well on the pecan farm. I told him once after he helped one of my companies collect a big receivable. ” I will tell you what I told my dog Tuffy this morning when I took him outside..Great job Tuffy”
I appreciate your sentiments and reflections Gary. Very much appreciated. What a blessing these God-made pets are.
My heart hurts and my eyes leak reading about the loss of your sweet Tracker Boy. The mostly unconditional love of a dog is just so pure. It reminds me of the little video and song “God and Dog” by Wendy J Francisco (you can find it on YouTube). Maybe not 100% scriptural, but a sweet ode. I’m so sorry – I know you will miss him.