Someone had mentioned that I was overdue in writing about my dogs in a bulletin the other day, and sure enough because they said that something happened that I think works out well into a point for all of us to consider.

My dogs aren't the brightest animals God ever created on this earth. They are, as I have mentioned before, like bad children. Spoiled, demanding, bossy, and often times disobedient is the best way to describe them. Don't get me wrong, they can also be very adorable and sweet, too, which is probably why I keep them around at all. They don't pull their own weight most times, though. If someone broke in they might bark a little but after a few treats they would quickly accept the new person as a friend. They depend on you for everything, in particular food, which is what I want to lead into today.

When Deniese and I first got married, she brought Brewster with her. That was her pomer. I brought Dave, which was my son. You can debate which of us got the better deal, but regardless [ found myself with another small mouth to feed. We feed our dogs once a day, with a little dry food along the way, so when supper time comes and they get that one meal they chomp it down like they are starving, which I guess partly is the nature of dogs and partly is true - they are certainly hungry. Being a small dog, Deniese told me to feed Brewster half a can of dog food a day.

One day, watching old Brew chomp down his food, lick the bowl, and hungrily look at me holding the rest of the can, I gave in to my curiosity and gave him the rest of the can. He quickly snapped it up, just as fast as the first half. Now in full blown engineer mode (how much CAN a little dog eat?) I served up another half can and watched him eat it as promptly as the other two. Now Brewster was watching me with awe on his face, as I got ready to serve him that second half of a can. Of course Deniese came in right about then to see why feeding him was taking so long. She thought I had only fed him half of one can, until she saw the other empty can and got to wondering. Brewster, for his part, was quite bulging at the seams. Whoops! He got very sick, which I got to take care of. Yuk.

Not long ago, our smallest dog Taffy got into our biggest dog's food dish and came away with a huge chunk of meat. For a big dog it would have been a good sized bite, but for a small dog it should have been chopped into several pieces. These are domestic dogs, not wolves, and they don't rend and tear their food. Fearing one of the other dogs might get it, she didn't even chew it - she tried to swallow it outright. Of course it got stuck right in her throat. Rather than spit it out so she could breathe, she held firm on it. She would rather have died than let any of the others get it. I had to yank it out of her non-breathing mouth, which she was none too happy about. Well, I wasn't too happy about it, either. Yuk.

Do you see a trend here? Dogs are very determined when it comes to food. In fact, they are downright stupid about it. Now, we as people are much smarter than dogs, right? We know there is a time for everything: a time to eat, a time to sleep, a time to pray. And we as smart humans don't go overboard on something to the point that it causes us harm, do we?

I beg to differ. People get caught up in "harmless" things all the time because they go to excess. When someone starts to amass a lot of money, or a lot of fame, or a lot of anything else, they start to have troubles. They worry about losing that something, and often put a lot of their faith and pride in it. They may compromise the faith in God they have, not always in the gathering of the item but in the keeping of it. The devil wanted Jesus to jump from the top of the temple, perhaps not so much to prove he had power but to display it and become drunk with it.

Jesus also talks about those who hear the word but the cares of the world choke it out of them. People hang on to sin sometimes even when it's killing them! I wish we could reach in and yank it right out of their lives. Yuk!

I have another thought about that. It would be better, would it not, that we were so determined with God's word that it choked out any sin we might have in our lives? Does that sound kind of strange to you? Well, we are made dead to sin because we become partakers of the spiritual food of life. Jesus says once we eat of it, we will never hunger or thirst again. We "die" so that we might live. Our friends often find the change in us mystifying and frightening, just as if we were indeed made dead to sin but alive in Christ, which we are! Think about it.

Randy