Wednesday, May 10, 2017

                I will confess that I have a love/hate relationship with our dog Kramer, one of our two, 10-year old Australian Shepherds. He is a very high-needs dog – full of separation anxiety, emotionally high-strung, doesn’t get along with our other dog and is a few kibbles short when it comes to a full bowl of smarts.  But he is uber-loving, friendly with just about everybody and Susan loves him unconditionally, and defends him when I am ready to take him to the nearest SPCA shelter (about twice a week, minimum).

                Even so, I become highly stressed and worried when he becomes sick. This week he became very lethargic and wouldn’t eat (both highly irregular).  Then he started to limp on his right hind leg. Then he had the messy trots -  I was running around the house with all-purpose cleaner and rug-spot remover.

                Off to our terrific vet, Dr. Jodi Thompson. And to make a long story short and so as not to gross you out too much, x-rays showed a sewing needle had somehow lodged in his back foot and was the cause of all the other symptoms. I have no idea how it happened. He stayed over night, on antibiotics and pain killers and was scheduled for minor surgery the next morning.

                Now comes the even weirder part. When the doctor phoned after the surgery, she said when she opened the wound the needle was already gone. She was as surprised as anyone. They checked his bedding and took extra x-rays, including of his stomach to see if he swallowed it after somehow getting it out, but the needle remains a mystery – both how it got into his foot and how it got out or where it is.

                Kramer is now home – resting comfortably with a steady diet of pills and medication for the next few days. Needless to say, I can’t afford to take him to the pound; I have too much invested in him. It will be Kraft dinner and soup for a while.

                If you have pets you will understand this story and the lengths and cost we owners are willing to go and spend. If you don’t have pets, you may think that this behaviour may seem strange for “just” a dog.

                Let me take a big leap from Kramer’s story to consider something Paul once alluded to, about himself. It had been a very humbling thing for Paul to admit that “a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan…” (2 Corinthians 12:7). It was a constant source of prayer, asking for relief from it.  No one really knows what it exactly was that was hurting him. Most authorities assume it was physical. I have wondered whether it had to with some sort of failing eyesight, maybe even as a result of the blindness he suffered on the Damascus road. At the end of Galatians, he refers to how large his own handwriting was, again an allusion to a problem with his sight.

Paul calls it a “weakness” and because of it, he finds a deeper relationship with God. “Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness,’” (12: 8-9).

                Some might argue that it is a callous God who allows his children to suffer. Paul has not written that God gave him this thorn in the flesh. I am reminded of the many Psalms in which the petitioners are decrying and complaining about the physical suffering that is being experienced, and yet they remain constant in their trust (i.e. faith) that God has not and will not abandon anyone just when God is needed the most (e.g. Psalm 6 or 38). These personal laments are persistent cries of hope when there is “no soundness in my flesh,” (Ps.38:7). But rather than give in or give up, the speaker prays, “But it is for you, O Lord, that I wait; it is you, O Lord my God, whom will answer… (v.15).

                Thus it is, in a similar vein, that Paul finds his trust in God strengthened in spite of the thorn in his flesh.  It becomes a part of his Christian testimony that despite this severe impediment he remains ever faithful to Jesus Christ. It doesn’t stop him, but rather propels him. “Therefore, I am content with weakness, insults, hardship, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong, (2 Cor. 12:10).

                If and when you or I go through those thorny, prickly, side-hurting physical trials and tribulations who better to have on our side but the God of love and compassion? That’s when we need God more than ever. It seems a paradoxical mystery in some ways, how any kind of pain can possibly be a moment of grace and meaning, but as both the Cross and the Resurrection work together we believe that this Power of Life still works in us and through us.  

“If God is for us, who can be against us?”

Dale