It all started during prayer time at church yesterday when the pianist asked for prayers because she and her husband were facing putting down their beloved aged and ill dog. A common sympathetic nerve was touched among members of the congregation with the brother taking the prayer requests digressing into a memory of his one and only cat.
"I never liked cats," he said, "But this one adopted me." He told how the cat would rush to meet him at night. "Then he would ignore me," he said, but it was obvious how much the cat came to mean to him over the next seven years. Then one night he felt something under his tire, and went to remove a grandchild's toy, only to find it was the cat. "I prayed that God would take Buddy-cat to heaven," he said, tearing up.
The organist then interjected a testimony that she had founded a wounded dog on the road in front of her house. "It was groomed and had a collar, so I knew it belonged to someone," she said. She washed its cuts and tried to feed it, but it was hurt too badly to survive. After calling all her neighbors with no clue to its owner, the next day she called the vet's number on its collar to find out it belonged to a new resident who had just moved into the community.
A sad story ensued of how the 15-year-old blind dog had gotten out in the unfamiliar area and was hit by a car. "But I met my new neighbor and made a new friend!" she exclaimed. "I think it was a witness to her that I had compassion on the little dog. I had placed it in a box and she took it home to bury it."
A man read a scripture from Proverbs 12:10 that says, "A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast." The pastor had to finally stem the outflowing tide of animal stories, but it reminded me of something our son had shared at breakfast.
We were eating with them at Braum's that morning before they left to go back to Texas after having been here for a family wedding the day before. In his inimitable story-telling way, Trevor told of the family's coming home from shopping one evening to find their little dog, Jack, missing. They called and called him to no avail, and after a search around the neighborhood, they gave up for the night.
Then, sitting down to his computer, what should appear on Facebook but a comical picture of Jack, looking a little uncertain and like a deer in the headlights, his mop of bangs awry as if from a shampoo. An explanation was posted underneath that someone took him in, fed and bathed him and was searching for his owner. (I quipped, "Maybe he said, 'I'm not telling!'") They lost no time in retrieving their funny little dog.
(That brought to mind a memory of when Howard lost a favorite hat, and after searching for it all week, I noticed I had an e-mail from our son in Houston. I opened it, and there was our 5-year-old granddaughter wearing the missing hat! "Did you forget something?" it read. No wonder we couldn't find it! It was 500 miles away where we'd left it on a recent trip!)
Last night at church when the pastor asked for a few short testimonies, an octogenarian took the mic and told how his visiting grandson had found a baby bird that had fallen from a nest. Despite the parent birds diving at him, he managed to put the fledgling back into the nest. Makes you realize that His eye really is on on the sparrow. Like the poem by Cecil Francis Alexander, "All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful, The Lord God made them all."
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