Lessons From My New Dog
I wonder how often God thinks of me the way that I think of my rescue dog.
My wife and I recently adopted our first dog. We named him Gondor. (Why Gondor? So that when he’s whining to go out at 2am, my wife can wake me up and say “Gondor calls for aid.”)
Gondor is a six-month-old puppy, and he’s a rescue. We don’t know what happened to him before we got him, but we suspect that it was something bad, because he’s scared of almost everything. He growled at me every day for the first few weeks we had him.
It occurred to me, as my wife and I have worked to rehabilitate him, that my relationship with Gondor has given me a little bit of insight into how I think God must see us humans.
1) Unconditional love
I’m not blind to Gondor’s faults. I know he growls at me when I make sudden movements or when I approach him when he’s cuddling with my wife. I know he’s not fully potty trained. I know he’s scared of pretty much everything.
But somehow, being aware of those faults doesn’t impact my love for him at all*.
I think this is how God sees us. I used to think that if I sinned less, then God would love me more; or, conversely, that if I sinned more then that would somehow make God love me less. But on balance, I don’t think that’s true. It’s not that God’s blind to my sins, any more than I’m blind to Gondor’s growling and desire to pee on the new bed that I bought him. It’s just that God’s knowledge of my sins doesn’t seem to have any bearing on how much He loves me. His love for me is unconditional.
*In the interest of complete honesty I should mention that this isn’t exactly true. Past a certain point, Gondor’s behavior would be a barrier to me loving him; say, if he were to try and take a bite out of my wife every time he saw her. As intense as my love for Gondor is, it’s still just a pale approximation of the intensity of God’s love for us.
2) Fear can be a barrier to accepting God’s blessings
When it comes to Gondor, my only goal is that he be happy and healthy and full of love and joy every day of his life. That’s it.
To that end, I’m constantly looking for ways to bless him. I offer him treats, I invite him to go on walks, I offer to cuddle with him and pet him and play with him. Whenever I’m around, I look for ways that I can invite him into something that will make his life better.
He wants very little of it.
A couple of days ago I had planned to take him for a hike. Gondor is scared of the noises of our apartment complex, but he also loves walking and being in nature, so I thought a hike would be something that he would really enjoy. He wanted none of it; as soon as I took down his leash from the wall, he ran and hid in his corner. My wife wasn’t home, and nothing I could do could entice him out.
I wanted to bless Gondor, but his fear wouldn’t let him receive it.
But it’s tough for me to judge Gondor too harshly, because I do the exact same thing. I know intellectually that God loves me deeply and that every single thing that He invites me into will, if I accept His invitation, make my life better. But I still hide out sometimes in my fear or in my sense of shame, too trapped by my own flesh to accept His loving invitation.
But here’s where the story gets hopeful.
An hour or so after my failed attempt to take Gondor for a hike, my wife got home. He let her put his leash on, and then he and I were out the door. I took him to a beautiful hiking trail and he had a wonderful time.
Gondor’s fear didn’t make my invitation go away. He rejected it the first time, but I loved him and I wanted him to be happy, so I kept inviting him until he said yes.
I think that’s how God operates with us.
In his video “You’re Not Running Out of Time,” theologian Jamie Winship says that there are two Greek words for time used in the Bible: chronos and kairos.
Chronos refers to our linear progression through chronological time.
Kairos refers to a life-changing event. Kairos is the invitations, big and small, that God offers us each and every day.
Jamie says that chronos passes (or, more accurately, we pass through it) whereas kairos is more like a moment that God is inviting us into. Kairos events are events that we can approach, but if we refuse to go near them, they don’t go away. Instead they’re just sitting there, waiting for us to go to them. As Jamie puts it:
“When God invites us into something, he’s not bound by time. He’s not saying to you, ‘You have x amount of hours to get here or this is going to disappear.’ He’s saying these kairos moments are ahead of you on your chronos journey in life.”
When we feel God inviting us into something but we’re too full of fear or guilt or shame to accept the invitation, we should take heart. God’s not going to give up on us. Odds are good that the essence of that same invitation will keep showing up as God keeps pursuing us and our good.
3) Fear is a liar
When I picked up Gondor’s leash to take him for a hike, he thought that I was planning to take him for a walk in our apartment complex. The complex is full of people and strange noises, neither of which he’s a fan of, and so he understandably went and hid in his corner.
But I wasn’t trying to invite him on a walk in our apartment complex. I was trying to invite him on a secluded, quiet hike with very few people and fewer noises. I think if I had had the capacity to show him what I was actually trying to do, he would have been a lot less frightened.
Again, I see parallels to my own walk with God.
When God invites me into something and my fear flares up, I have a choice: I can look to my fear for guidance, or I can look to God. If I look to my fear, I’m often prone to make the wrong decision or at the very least to miss out on an exciting opportunity. If I look to God, I’m much more likely to step boldly into something I’ll really enjoy.
My hope for Gondor is that, as he learns to trust me and my love for him more, he becomes more willing to turn away from his fear long enough to let me bless him. I suspect that God has more or less the same hope for me.
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