It must have been all the bulletins on the topic from the past month or so! Sort of like "speak of the devil and he will appear", except in this case it was something a bit furrier.

Last night about 1:30 or so one of my dogs started barking downstairs in the living room. Now, that is simply something they don't do. Yes, they do go outside and bark at seemingly nothing in the dark in the back yard. They of course bark when people come to the house. But when things to bump in the night, unless there is a whole lot of bumping going on they don't make a whimper.

You're probably thinking oh he's got another dog story today. Well no, that isn't the topic I was thinking of. You see I got up and yelled at my dogs for waking me up. I made them come upstairs and I locked them in the bedroom with me, at which point they sat there and growled now and then. When my dogs are this persistent they are always right, but in my half-sleep I just figured maybe some raccoon or something knocked something over and forgot about it. Except as I lay there listening to the dogs growl now and then, I realized I too heard things bumping around. Figuring it was the wind, I opened the bedroom door and let the dogs patrol the house and the back yard. I mean, once they saw there was nothing there they'd go back to sleep, right?

And that's what I did, go back to sleep. Our big dog planted herself at the top of the stairs and was awake for hours watching down the steps and down the hall for any intruders. I was quite impressed. The bumping, especially on the front porch, went on for a long while but I just reckon'd it was the wind, I felt justified this morning when I saw a few things had been blown about, including our bird suet feeder. It got so blown around, half was still hanging on the hook on the front porch and the other half was a good ways out into the yard. Funny how it got pulled in half though. Thinking about it, I mentioned the strangeness to Deniese who went out to look for herself and promptly came back to get me to come see the OTHER bird feeder had been bent down by some pretty hefty weight, and every speck of food was gone. No wind did that!

Most of you realize by now that it wasn't the wind banging around on my front porch, but a very determined and hungry bear who was raiding my bird feeders. We confirmed this by seeing his tracks on the ground. When we went to tell our neighbor, they already knew about the bear because the neighbor behind us had seen it stomping around in the woods.

You may ask what is the spiritual point here? Well let's zero in on some. First off my dogs which are very reliable and trustworthy warned me of the "danger" but I chose to ignore it. I also had good evidence of my own, lots of banging and bumping, but again I chose to ignore it. Because of that, I suffered some loss. Just like when we have those who are more experienced, or even the bible itself, warning us of spiritual dangers but we ignore it, and suffer for it. We do have those who watch out for us in spite of ourselves, like our elders, deacons, teachers, and parents, yet sometimes instead of keeping watch we decide to sleep. This time, some bird food was stolen and I annoyingly have to repair some light damage, just as spiritually we may be left ashamed or lose some of our good reputation. Truly, though, if the danger had been bigger than one of these puny New England black bears or directed in a different way, such as coming into the house or killing one of my dogs, that would have been much more serious.

I could just hope the bear never comes back. Perhaps I could never "do good" again, and thus no longer feed my feathered friends. Why encourage harassment and attacks by putting myself out there? Sadly there are those who feel this way spiritually, knowing that mentioning God to others, praying in public, and being apart from the world puts a bulls-eye on their back. The devil goes around like a growling bear, seeking whom he may devour (or something like that). What do you think? Should I button up my house and hide inside, or learn to trust my dogs who loyally warn me of danger and deal with it? Probably the latter, although I should likely be careful making fun of Dave Dugas or Mo (or Eric or Robert!) too much...

Randy