PEA RIDGE — Just before Christmas 2005, we moved from Pea Ridge to our new home on the family farm, and we wanted to get a dog for companionship and security. We found an add in the paper reading, “Handsome golden lab, free to good home.” We adopted Diego and love him. We give him food, acres to roam on and access to our home through a doggie door. We even got a helpmate for him. Diego loves to be with us, and he wants to please us. However, he doesn’t always understand what we want from him, and he sometimes doesn’t trust that we want what is best for him, especially at the vet’s office.

Unfortunately, his doggy nature entices him to bark too much, eat shoes, roll in stinky stuff and he doesn’t understand that the sirencall of coyotes is to draw him out of the yard so they can devour him. We reward him when he does well, and we occasionally spank him so he’ll learn that actions have consequences.

Unfortunately, we cannot communicate to him that we want what is best for him and our relationship.

For him to understand us, we’d need to become dogs, speak dog talk and be good dog examples.

Our Creator has the same problem with us.

He loves us and gives us everything we needed.

His commandments are for our well-being and to ensure our companionship. Unfortunately, we distrust His laws and do things our own way. Because He cannot tolerate evil, we are out of fellowship and deserve punishment for our disobedience. Because He loves us, He wants to restore our companionship. To better communicate with us, He became a perfect human.

As a gift of love, He tookthe punishment for our disobedience. Through His Word, we must accept or reject His gift of love.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…That was the true Light which gives light to every man…He was in the world, and the world was made through Him...But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1: 1-14 NKJV)

Community, Pages 5 on 12/23/2009