Lent 2022, Day 29

 


From Nicky Gumbel’s commentary on today’s reading from Luke 8:

“I have never met a strong person with an easy past. Faith is tested.”

Although I imagine this is not universally true, I think it is mostly true of most people. Stress, hardship, testing, tend to strengthen us. It’s in nature and it’s in human nature. When my kids were small, I used to say that I wished for strength and toughness for them through developed muscles, not from scarring—or as my friend Linda Douglas put it, “we’d prefer that they learn some lessons from the textbook and not the field trip.”

 But sometimes the field trips of life are where we learn our most important lessons, where we grow the most. To protect ourselves and our children completely from those field trips, were it even possible, would be for them to miss out on much of what it is to be human. Sadness, loss, pain, illness, unfair treatment … all of these things happen in this broken world, and while we don’t wish for them, don’t welcome them, they end up being part of our story—part of who we are. 

Libby is not a human, which might be news to someone only skimming these thoughts of mine. She’s not a human. She’s an actual, literal dog. She is human-adjacent, observing and loving and sometimes biting us. For her, a dog, traumas of the past have weakened her. For her, there will be no bigger picture, no looking back at lessons learned or obstacles overcome through adversity. Instead, she must be reliant on the same species that hurt her, to now love her and keep her safe.

Maybe that’s a different kind of redemption, a different kind of strength.

#lent2022 #bibleinoneyear #rescuedogsofinstagram #repentandbelieve

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