We are discussing what John Wesley called “the means of grace,” paths and patterns that open us to God’s grace in our lives.
Week 1 we talked about what means of grace are
Last week we talked about a key means of grace, reading the Bible.
Since the grace of God is surprising and is - as John Newton famously called it - “amazing” I can only assume God’s grace would come to us in ways that surprise and amaze us.
It’s why I believe dogs are a means of grace.
A few what-I-am-nots are in order.
-I am not arguing here for a biblically established position on pet ownership (that doesn’t exist).
-When Paul writes “those dogs, those mutilators of the flesh” he is not casting dispersion on pet ownership, but drawing minds to a common sight of street dogs that will eat anything.
-I am not trying to be trivial. I am suggesting something virtually everyone with a pet experiences, and suggesting behind it is God’s grace in your life.
-I am not suggesting you need to agree with me.
I am arguing as a Wesleyan for something in lived human experience as a conduit of God’s grace.
Wesleyans famously recognize four ways to establish a Christian practice. (IYKYK).
#1 Reason - It makes sense.
#2 Tradition - The living faith of the Church that has sustained the Church. Gustav Mahler gets is right: “Tradition is not the hallowing of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”
#3 Experience – It rings true to human experience and allows humans to flourish under God.
#4 Scripture – the measuring stick for all practice, including the other three.
When my family lived in Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe), we had a dog, Socks. Socks let us take him everywhere. Dress him up. Push him around. Push him over. He put up with it all, usually with sad eyes (he was a Basset Hound), and a lick. I felt safe around Socks, like the world was a safe place to be.
When I was maybe 8 and our family lived in Omaha, NE, we had a Golden Retriever, Kipp. Kipp lived in the backyard in cold Nebraska winters in his dog-house (this was pre most-dogs-live-inside days). He always played, was always excited to see me, protected our family. I was terrified when I watched him bolt through an open gate one day and in front of my eyes, get struck by a car. He lived. At a low childhood moment, I remember sitting on the side stoop, Kipp panting by my side. I leaned over to him, and in the sadness of a little boy, confided “Kipp, you’re my only friend.” He leaned into my sadness and tears, panting, his companionship and love washing over me as comfort.
Oswald Chambers wrote about a time of intense struggle with knowing God’s love. He couldn’t get to the bottom of his own emotions or how to understand and grasp God’s love for him. One day, unbeckoned, his beloved dog came in, put his head on Oswald’s knees and stared into his eyes for several moments, then walked out. At that moment, it became clear to Oswald that through his dog, God was communicating his love.
In the middle of a harsh Indiana winter, with deep snow on the ground, a brown lab puppy (later, we discovered she was a fully grown Cocker Spaniel/Brown Lab mix) stray came by our house. The kids were 3, 5 and 8 and the last thing Andrea and I wanted was something else to care for. But the winter was cold, the dog wouldn’t go to anyone else’s house, and the kids set up a small tent for wind cover on the front stoop. Brinkley, a hot mess of a dog, became part of our family. She protected us always, at one point getting tazed by the police in doing so—a funny story for another time—and in the way dogs do, has been a source of love and joy to our family for a decade now. As her days are waning, multiple times I’ve taken her face in my hands and thanked her for creatureliness, for her love expressed under God.
Dogs are a means of grace. I’m convinced.
Dogs, like all the created order, worship God by being fully what they were meant to be. They are perfectly what God made them.* They don’t try to be cats or lions or trees. No energy is expended trying to be something they are not. Being who they are is their act of worship. Their dogness is their gift, as a tree’s treeness is its gift. As such, they serve as an example to us of how free we could be if we simply were who God made us. And they were made by God as a conduit of grace, love, loyalty, and protection.
Don’t miss God’s care for you through what he sends you on four legs.
*Yes, we domesticated dogs, which is what we were created to be by the way, tend-ers of the created order under God. In domesticating dogs, we brought out their purpose.
Scott Marshall is lead pastor at Wichita First Church of the Nazarene