Puppy Love

This blog is humorous but brings across a very real verse of truth from the Word of God. First Peter 4:8 says, “Love covers a multitude of sins.” For about the last year our family has been dealing with a new addition to our family—a puppy that is half Labrador Retriever and half Golden Retriever. We got him as a baby a couple of days before the big blizzard at the beginning of March last year. We learned very quickly that he was going to be a lot of work—we just didn’t know how much work/trouble he would be!

Blacky has done everything from tearing up flowers to digging down to the sewer line to ripping up the kids’ inflatable pool to destroying shoes, and about anything else he can get his paws, or should we say, teeth, on. We, along with some great help from Jock Gettys, installed an underground fencing system to keep him from killing the neighbor’s chickens and tearing clothes off their clothesline.

The first day we got the underground fencing installed he got shocked. We heard him yelp and thought he ran away. We spent hours driving around looking for him and asking neighbors if they had seen him. We looked all over but couldn’t find him anywhere. We went to bed that night thinking he might be gone forever. As much of a pain as he had been, we were still sad. (Pastor Rebecca even prayed and used her faith so that he would come home.) We were excited to find out the next morning that he had run into the garage and had been hiding under the van all afternoon and night. (At first Pastor Rebecca thought that surely the Lord had performed a miracle by translating him back from wherever he was lost into our garage. Then we just discovered he had gotten stuck under our vehicle.)

This winter we have felt sorry for him being out in the cold so we have let him come in the basement into the laundry room to warm up for a little bit if we are going to be downstairs. Last night I decided to tie him up by the basement door and just let him lie on the rug and warm up for awhile since it was so cold. In the few minutes he was there he chewed a hole in the rug and broke his leash. He then came running upstairs all excited to surprise everyone. If any of you have ever owned a puppy before you can probably relate at least a little bit! (I have had other puppies, but I don’t ever remember them being this much work or causing this many problems). I have thought several times over the last year about the verse at the top, “…love will cover a multitude of sins”. Because we love him we have chosen not to stay angry with him for the things he has done wrong. Although the application of this verse may be funny in this story, it is something we can all certainly apply in our Christian walk toward others every single day. If we can overlook the annoying habits of a puppy, we should surely be able to overlook the faults of our brothers and sisters and continue to love them as well. God bless.

Pastor Jeff