As the day ended, Jan and I settled in for the evening to watch a movie. Just before the movie began, Jan went into our pantry to bring out a special treat for our dog, Ladybug. She is a strange mix of breeds. Her father was an Australian Shepherd and her mother a Labradoodle. Ladybug looks like an over-sized 40-pound Jack Russell Terrier.
When Jan left the room and began to rustle the bag where special treats are kept, Ladybug heard the sound and knew what it meant. She ran to her assigned place in the living room where she had been trained to sit awaiting the arrival of her treats. She knew she had to be in that particular spot and seated before Jan arrived and her treat could be delivered.
I was sitting on the couch watching the event transpire. Ladybug was so anticipating Jan’s arrival it was as if I wasn’t even in the room. Ladybug was focused on the doorway through which Jan would appear.
Our dog’s actions affirmed something most of us know but need a reminder of from time-to-time when our hopes and dreams aren’t panning out like we thought they would. We can prematurely abandon a place of promise and move on from where we were told to wait for the arrival of God’s goodness. We move on because we limited God to our timetable. In that place of a self-imposed failure, we think God had failed us when in reality, He was completely faithful and arrived in His perfect timing, but we were elsewhere trying to make things happen in our limited strength and wisdom.
If God has given you a promise and a place of its fulfillment and you walked away, go back and wait. Do what Ladybug does so well. She focuses only on the place of her master’s appearance. Nothing in her environment can move her attention from the hope that her master will deliver what was promised.
Wonderful! I love this story of your dog totally believing and anticipating her promise! I can just see her tail wagging and banging against the floor as she waits, not so pariently.