Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Deuteronomy 31:6 (NIV)
We have a new addition to our family, an eight-week-old Doberman Pinscher named Lucerne. She is red, so we are calling her Lucy after Lucille Ball. Like her namesake, she has made us laugh a lot. She doesn’t quite have control of her very large feet yet and often loses her balance. As she careens around corners, her legs come out from under her and she skids across the floor on her belly. She loves to drag things out of the laundry and has a favorite squeaky toy that she carries around with her. She is also a lover and wants nothing more than to be held close to your chest, with her head on your shoulder to take a snooze. I have banned naps for Lucy during the day, however. Her first night home, she had dozed on the very long car ride home and got her second wind about midnight. We always use a crate to provide a safe place for our puppies to be during the day while we are at work. It is not a cage, but like a den where a wild dog would seek shelter. Its walls give a puppy security and help them to be calm. At least a crate eventually will do that. Lucy had never been in a crate, and she found it to be a very lonely place. Away from her mom and nine brothers and sisters for the first time, not only was she ready to play, she did not like being isolated in the kitchen much less put in a wire box! She began howling the moment that we put her in the crate and cried so loudly I thought she was going to hurt herself. She sounds like a security alarm, woo, woo, woo, then, a pause for a breath and back to woo, woo, woo again. After over an hour of her racket, I woke my husband up (yes, he was sleeping through it) and asked him to go and calm her down. I was all in favor of just carrying her back to our room and putting her in our bed to sleep, but knew he was adamant that she become used to her crate. He was so convinced that this was a lesson she needed to learn that he took a pillow and blanket and stretched out on the floor beside her crate where he stayed for three hours until she settled down and went to sleep. Isn’t that just like our God? There are things in life that we must go through. Trials that are hard. Painful lessons we must learn. While He does not change our circumstances, because He knows that they will make us better in the long run, He consoles us by walking beside us through them. Lucy had to learn to stay in her crate, but her master stayed right with her through the long dark lonely night. So does our Heavenly Master. Be strong, you are never alone.
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