Twelve years ago, Linda, Chelsea and I, with some help from our adult son, Halden and my best friend, Jim, made the best doggone decision we have ever made. We bought a top quality, yellow Labrador Retriever pup at what we all thought was a ludicrous price, (hence all the help needed), named him Frosty Bud (because of his pale, frothy, beer-like colour) and proceeded to be blessed with a dog experience to pale all others. Buddy proved to be the smartest, most loving best friend and hunting partner I have ever encountered. He has excelled in all things, even in the past few years, his senior years.
I could go on and recount chapter after chapter of stories about how great a dog Buddy turned out to be and perhaps sometime I will. But he did manifest one flaw. With what I hope is Buddy’s permission, I want to tell a little story about this side of him.
At about nine weeks of age, Buddy turned out to be an incorrigible, indiscriminate eater. At first we thought it was just a puppy thing, but he never outgrew it. If he went outside to do his business, business was soon forgotten as he cruised the lawn looking for anything he could gulp down. Our lawn goes right down to the shore of Lac La Hache and there is always stuff on it ranging from peanut shells left by the squirrels, droppings left by the Canada geese, poop left by the neighbor’s dog and a whole array of mushrooms. Off of our property Buddy loved to try horse buns and cow pies. Whenever Buddy went outside you went out with him, not for your health but for his; and you spent half your time with your hands up to your elbows in his mouth digging out the latest thing he found and tried to scarf down.
The house really wasn’t much different. Any food that hit the floor under any circumstance was his for the gulping. But so was any paper towel, facial tissue or candy wrapper. Nothing was out of the question. Soon after Buddy arrived on the scene, every waste can in the house had to be changed to one that had a self-closing lid. This was only a partial solution. Frequently we would still come home and find Buddy at the door with a pathetic, guilty look on his face. After doing an investigation we would find a lid pried off somewhere and the trashcan contents fully eaten. Once we found grandson Jacob’s pocket calendar, chewed, swallowed and puked all over our bedroom pillow. Another time an investigation turned up daughter Chelsea’s high school homework in a similar condition.
The pickup truck was fair game, too. We soon adjusted to keeping the pickup garbage free. One day on a trip to Vancouver Island we left Buddy in the truck to go up on deck to enjoy the scenic ferry ride. We came back and the people sitting in their car beside us rolled down their window and said; “Your dog has been up to something most of the way across. He keeps diving from the back seat to the front seat and back again.” We quickly investigated and found Buddy had emptied the Kleenex box, one tissue at a time. We hollered at him but he just smacked his lips.
Yesterday, our Buddy died a horrible death. Without going into the gut-wrenching details, our Buddy died from poisonous toxins from a small mushroom he scarfed down while on a walk. Linda was unable to get her hands down his throat fast enough. Our veterinarian couldn’t load him up with enough charcoal or antidote. In spite of all of our desperate attempts to save him, Buddy was gone in a shockingly short time, a victim of his penchant for indiscriminate eating. We spent our whole lives together trying to save Buddy from his eating habit and we failed. We are absolutely shredded with hurt and grief. I am writing this story today partly as personal therapy, and partly as a way of confessing to God that I think I now know how He feels about me a lot of the time.
By whatever definition you want to hang on it, sin amounts to making indiscriminate life choices that lead to death. Because of my indiscriminate life choices, my sin, I have often felt like I am living out the title of one of Jonathan Edward’s sermons, Sinner in the Hands of an Angry God. Because of my sin I have often felt the judgment of God. Because of my sin I have often felt the anger of God. What I have not been sensitive enough to feel up to now is the pain, hurt and grief of God. As to sin and my choices, what if God is continually trying to reach into my mouth, so to speak, trying to save me from myself by trying to influence my proclivity for making indiscriminate choices? As to sin and me, what if God, from Torah to gospel, from commandment to Holy Spirit, is continually trying to influence my life choices? And when in my predilection for making indiscriminate choices to sin, what if God feels pain, hurt and grief? What if God’s judgment and anger really finds its roots in His love for me and the pain and grief He feels when I choose to sin and bring suffering and death upon myself?
There is a part of the Hebrew scriptures that has always challenged me, in a Lenten kind of way. It’s the book of Hosea. This year it will be my Lenten reading project. In the book, through Hosea’s relationships with two wives who have an affinity for making indiscriminate choices concerning men and sex, God describes his hurt and pain over Israel’s sin. As I read it now, it sounds something like what I feel over Buddy and the indiscriminate eating that caused his death.
Rev. David Webber is a contributing editor to the Record. He is a minister of the Cariboo, B.C., house church ministry and the author of From Under a Blazing Aspen, And the Aspens Whisper and Like a Winter’s Aspen: Embracing the Creator’s Fire.
