A table in the presence of my enemies
The hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain.
– From Isaiah 25
Later in life, our family cared for another dog, not Lassie this time, but Bear.
We lived then where we live now, beside one of the busiest streets in Champaign-Urbana. Nowadays we do everything we can to keep our eight chickens in the back yard.
Bear had his own issues with the killer Lincoln Avenue. A few close scrapes made him mostly wise, but not at night so much, not when the traffic was gone. He never joined a pack, but he loved to explore on his own.
That Sunday morning I drove home from Indianapolis after a Promise Keeper’s conference. There were 60,000 men singing. We filled up the football stadium. We were reminded that we’re God’s kids before anything else, and that made being dads different. It seemed like, now, we could do it. None of us was alone.
Can I remember that now? Getting out of the car, stretching in the sun, there is Bear, just across the street, just across the busy street! I look and shout, “Bear, get over here!” He comes of course, excited, fast. Maybe a little ashamed. But he didn’t have time, he was halfway across and an out-of-town ambulance, siren shrieking, slammed into him.
I screamed again. Bear picked himself up and shrugged up our drive. I carried him, laid him in the sun beside our house. He wagged his tail, as best he could.
I cried and cried. Just the the night before Margaret told me that my much-loved cousin had been killed. In my implosion I realized I was sobbing from my deepest place, my baby place, out of the depths of infantile despair. How deep does it go? I was weeping desperately in my crib. Beside Bear, I sat down on the sun-warm sidewalk. It seemed like all I could do.
Margaret came outside when she heard my crying. Chris came out, and Marc and Andi, and they stood beside Bear, and they cried too. Andi knelt beside him and cradled his head and wept.
Because Bear had not yet died, I called Dr. King, my friend, our vet, and he met us at his office that Sunday morning, and we took our broken dog to him.
He did what the vets call “palpating.” Then as he felt all over Bear with tender, knowing fingertips Dr. King looked up at us, surprised, and said, “I don’t think he has any broken bones. But we’ll have to see how badly he’s been hurt inside.”
“Oh, Lord, you prepare a table in the presence of our enemies … such a great feast of juicy rich foods and choice fine wines.” While Dr. King worked with Bear, as we watched him, you could hear a pin drop. I scarcely breathed. But then he smiled, and spoke, and we breathed again, and smiled too. Bear was deeply, badly bruised. But perhaps he would live.
He did live, for many more beautiful years. The hand of the Lord rested on him, and we loved Bear and he loved us. He rolled in the leaves with Andi and me, and we found tasty pig ears for him at Christmas, and he was frightened of fireworks and storms and fled to his own corner of the crawl space under our house. He came out, though, every time he heard our steps, and his tail wagged the rest of his body. Happy he was.
Oh yes, Lord, happy were we all. I am still so thankful to have had these wonderful dogs in our lives, somehow completely free to love us without fail. In this way we follow them to you.
https://www.davesandel.net/category/advent-and-christmas-devotions-2019/
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archive.php?year=2019
