As I arrived home tonight from men's group, I opened the front door and was greeted by the normal frenzied welcome from my two dogs, Sahera and Gobi. I made my way through the entry and locked the door behind me, and as usual shuffled my way past the dogs and took off my coat. It's become a habit for me to, first thing, check the normal areas where my puppy Gobi may or may not have made a "mistake" while I was gone, and prepare to clean it up. He's pretty much house broken, but 4 hours, as I've learned is his breaking point. As I made way towards the kitchen, I noticed small, irregular patches of something black on the floor. I reached down and dabbed a part of one of the smudges with my index finger in order to examine it's contents a little more close up. Initially, I couldn't quite figure out what the substance was. It was greasy, and thankfully, it wasn't feces. So I followed the trail. It meandered through the kitchen, into the dining room, around the table and chairs, and then back out to the kitchen again. But it still didn't lead me to the source of this mysterious black substance. I took a look closer towards where the linoleum met the carpet of the living room area. It was there that the trail resumed. As I rounded the corner of the couch, I saw, with much horror, the culprit of the substance. There, Gobi, had returned to the scene of the crime. Near his now cowering head, lay a munched up, Uniball, waterproof, fade proof, black, ink pen! The cap still attached, with the opposite end completely destroyed and it's contents spilled all over the carpet.
Before I go on, I must let you in on part of Gobi's personality. You see, he has a liking, no... a love.... no.... an infatuation, with anything made of plastic! If it's left where he can get it, he WILL chew it up. Some of the long list of things he's chewed up consist of, remote controls, contact lens eye drop bottles, tubes of chapstick, hangers... Well, you get the point. The boy loves the feel of plastic between his young canine teeth.
Well, back to the ink situation. I immediately kenneled both dogs. "Why were they not in the kennel the first place?" you might ask. Well, it's too long of story, but lets just say that Gobi is an escape artist, and I've yet had the chance to reinforce his new kennel to make it "Gobi/Houdini-proof".
I then set about to pooling my cleaning tools and supplies and started picking up all the ink that had been soaking into the carpet. Thank the Lord for the Bissel "Little Green Machine"!. After pre-treating the stains and going through 2 tanks of detergent, followed by mopping up the linoleum, the stains were no more. It was as if Gobi hadn't committed the heinous crime to begin with. I freed them from their kennel and showed him the unconditional love that he expected from me.
Isn't that how the Lord through His infinite grace and mercy treats us? I once heard those two terms described this way: "Grace is getting what we don't deserve, and mercy is not getting what we do." Often, when people do things in our lives that hurt, offend, or merely just catch us off guard, we tend to react in ways that are not Christ-like and in fact are basically just out of immediate human reaction without thinking. We are called to be Christ to this world. We are called to act lovingly and show grace and mercy to those who have made mistakes in their lives. In doing so, we can be beacons of Christ's light and guide them to Him. Some of them already know Him, and those are the ones that we sometimes find it hardest to forgive and let back into our lives. Have you received grace and mercy from the Lord? Have you received them from others? Are you ready to reflect the unconditional love of the Savior to His world?
Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. 46You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. 47Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little."
48Then Jesus said to her, "Your sins are forgiven."
