woof

Read Mike's blog today about his dogs Moses and Joshua to understand why I'm writing about dogs today.

I've never been much of a dog person. I'm the first to admit it. In fact I've never been much of an animal person. To some this may make me cold and heartless. To me it just means that I don't have to vaccum up doghair, and hold back a slobbery mess every time the doorbell rings.

My parents got us a dog when I was a kid because I was deathly afraid of any type of canine, any size, breed or age. They bought a little cockerspaniel. A tiny little thing there is no way you could be afraid of. As it grew and I learned that dogs were not out to tear me limb from limb, my fear diminished. Taffy, our cocker, was a terribly stupid dog, and we weren't all that patient so she became an outside dog. We would feed her and go and play with her every now and then, but all she could really do was run. So she grew old in our backyard, and got cataracts and went blind.

While Taffy was still around but getting up there in doggy years we took in our cousin's dog Bear. They were moving to Houston and couldn't take Bear with them. Now Bear was hyper, very hyper, and he had an affinity for legs. Really he had an affinity for anything he could get his front paws on. Poor blind Taffy had to back herself into a corner to avoid being violated.

Christine and I don't have a dog, we live in an apartment and you have to pay a pet deposit just to have one. It's just not worth it to me. But if Jack's love of dogs is any indication, I'm sure someday we will have one. I don't like big dogs, and I really don't like little yappy dogs. Any suggestions for a good medium size dog, that is smart and easy to train? No rat terriers, no dachsunds, no labs, no cockerspaniels, and definitely no American Huskies(Bear).

built with rejects

There is a bit I really like in Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller where he talks about the significance of who Jesus chose to be his apostles. I kind of thought he was just walking along the beach and saw some people out in a boat and thought they look good, yelled out "Come follow me" and they did. I always thought that was kind of weird. If someone walked into my office today and said "Follow me and I will make you a fisher of men." I probably would have told him to wait in the lobby, and then snuck out a side door.

In the book, Miller is talking about how Jesus had been teaching in the synagogue and the people in his town knew at least who he was. He also talked about how people became rabbis in this culture. All Jewish boys went to school, after a certain point they were evaluated, the best continued school, the others went to learn their father's craft. Those that stayed in school were evaluated again later and the best of the best got to be apprentice's of rabbis. The others went out and learned their father's crafts.

Here is why I find this significant, Jesus could have gone after the best and the brightest students to follow him, but he didn't. He asked those out learning their father's crafts to follow him. The ones the Jewish rabbi's had deemed unworthy. All throughout the Bible God uses rejects, ill-equipped people to do His work. I love that about Him. It gives people like me hope that I can make a difference.