About a month ago I got a Rottweiler dog from an animal shelter. I got him for a watchdog. He is NOT a watchdog, he’s a friendly, very social play dog. He makes friends with everyone and wants to play with everyone. He’s super quick and super strong, and very well behaved.
Damien has everything he needs here – a big fenced backyard where I play with him every day, a doggie door so he can come inside and go outside as he pleases, two water dishes, two meals a day, and he usually sleeps at the foot of my bed.
He has everything he needs. Yet he has escaped the fenced backyard twice and run away. After two or three days, kind people have found him and returned him. This latest time, I got him back just this morning. I had already blocked everywhere I thought he might escape under the fence.
This morning I had a thought that amused me. How when we get away from God, we are so like Damien. I wonder if he’s thinking, ‘what an exciting world to explore, what new and fun things I may be missing’. He’s not really wrong. I’m thinking, it’s dangerous for him outside the fence, he may be wet, cold, hungry, lonely. Why would he leave everything that’s good for him?
I wonder if that is how God sees us when we don’t stay close to Him.
When Damien came home, I welcomed him, I feed him, he drunk a lot of water, he wanted to play fetch (or wrestle for a stick) and I played with him. I was glad.
How much greater is God’s goodness than mine! God welcomes us back when we return our heart to Him.
From the Bible scriptures, Luke 15 starting in verse 17, about the prodigal son, which paints a beautiful picture of someone returning to God:
“and when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.”
We can always come to the Father.