Long Time

It has been a long time since I have posted. Lots of stuff keeping me busy but I am going to try and keep this updated a few days a week.

I talked to a young woman named Holly yesterday who told me an incredible story and I want to share it with you. You will hear it again but I felt it was important to share with you now.

Ten years ago Holly was married and living in Atlanta. She and her husband had a trained German shepherd police dog and one day she was walking the dog along the Chattahoochee River when the dog saw something off the trail towards the river and decided to chase after it. Holly had the leash in her hand and also wrapped around her wrist. The area where they were had a steep embankment leading down to a cliff and a 30 foot drop down to the river. As the dog ran down the embankment she ran along behind it, pulled by the leash. The dog took a sudden turn to the right but her momentum carried her directly down the hill, causing both her and the dog to lose their balance and slide down the hill towards the cliff’s edge. Miraculously, there was a tree between her and the dog and the leash caught on the tree and she and the dog went over the edge of the cliff and were no hanging by the leash off the cliff.

Holly began to scream for help and the dog, hanging by its neck, began scrambling for a foothold. It was able to get its front paws on the ground atop the cliff when Holly realized that if the dog were able to pull itself onto the ground and safety, Holly’s weight would then pull the dog around the tree and they would both fall the 30 feet to the river. Holly gave the command to the dog to be still and the dog immediately obeyed the command. They hung there together, Holly by her hold on the leash, the dog by its neck, for 30 minutes until someone heard and responded to her cries for help and rescued them. Holly has rotator cuff problems to this day and the dog broke two vertebrae in its neck that were surgically repaired.

The dog was trained to obey the command of the master, the dog’s experience of its master was that the master loved the dog and therefore was to be trusted always. On this day, the dog trusted the command of its master in a life and death situation and obeyed at the cost of even trying to save its own life. Do we know and love the Lord who died for us in obedience to the Father's command enough to trust Him this completely? It makes me think back to Genesis and how everything was perfect until one of the created things decided to not act in obedience to the Lord's command. Until that moment in Genesis 3 the Lord spoke and it was so. Sometimes I think that giving us reasoning ability wasn't that great an idea.