My day started out a little earlier and a little stranger than I hoped. Our beloved camp dog "Belle" has been with our family for at least the last seven or eight years. If you are familiar with Skipstone, then you've probably met Belle.
Although I don't consider myself a "dog person" or really even a "pet person", I have grown to love Belle. She's a great dog , who rarely does anything wrong, doesn't require a lot of attention from me (in part because she gets nonstop attention from 140 kids everyday!), and for the most part just "hangs out" and takes in the activities of the day.
Like most of us though, Belle does have her issues. She is intelligent enough to know that we sell Chic-Fil-A biscuits to our students in the mornings on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She has developed a perfect strategy for getting her fair share of the biscuit population on those mornings, by strategically placing herself to put on the "puppy eyes" and beg, or if all else fails, waiting on the students to look the other way and grab the biscuit right out of their hands and dispose of it, wrapper and all.
She also has strange sleeping habits. She claims a particular spot on our old sofa, and sleeps lying on her back with her paws sticking straight up in the air. There nothing wrong with this I suppose, but it sure looks strange when I leave the house each morning and she picks her head up and looks at me as if to say "can you please be a little more quiet, I'm not done with my beauty rest?".
Belle's worst issue is that she is absolutely terrified of bad weather. I have never been able to understand how such an easy going dog can absolutely lose her ever loving mind when bad weather arrives!
It starts well before I even know a storm is coming....she starts panting, walking around with a terrified look on her face, as though she has just seen satan in the closet. As the storm draws closer, she will find Shondi (I guess because of her gift of mercy) or me (I'm not sure why "me") and walk so closely to our feet that we can hardly move. If we try to put her in a "safe" place, so that she isn't under of feet, she will scratch and beat on the door until she convinces us that being under our feet is less annoying than replacing whatever door she is about to claw her way through.
At 5:30am this morning I awoke to the familiar scratching and clawing on our bedroom door. I layed there for a minute, hoping she would give up and go back to her "upside down" sleep, even calling to her through the door that it was just the wind blowing (as though she understood or even cared). I finally gave up, walked her back into the den, and tried my best to persuade her to go back to sleep. She just sat there with the "but I've just seen satan" look and waited for me to take a step.
Since I was already wide awake by now, I headed for the bathroom to shower. She was right under my feet from the den to the bathroom door, where I politely explained that she was not welcome in the bathroom (the line has to be drawn somewhere!). When I finished my shower, and opened the bathroom door to go out, there she was, patiently waiting to get under my feet again.
By this time, the rest of the household was waking from their slumbering, so I passed off the "comforter role" to somebody else and came on down to the office.
As I was thinking about the morning, it occurred to me that from God's perspective, maybe Belle has the right idea. I wonder how many times we see the storms of life coming, but instead of trying to get to our Master, we walk around terrified by the threat of the storm, so worried or afraid that we look like we just saw satan in the closet! Yes, we get through the storms, but we sure bear a lot of unnecessary fear and worry when we fail to get to the feet of Jesus, where a "peace that surpasses all understanding" is found.
Several times a day in recent weeks, I have met or heard of people who are facing significant storms in their life. People are losing their jobs, their homes, struggling with broken relationships, and fighting spiritual battles. These storms are real, some are so intense that imminent danger is near. My prayer is that when we find ourselves in a storm, our first reaction is to RUN to our Master, the Prince of Peace, for it is at HIS feet that we can find our greatest comfort. God never intended for us to walk through our storms alone and afraid! RUN to His feet, whatever it takes, just RUN there now and trust Him....he will take care of you!
Psalm 46:1-3 NIV
God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.
Run To HIM Today,
Chip Moody
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