Interesting thought.

Now that we have this dog, I suppose ALL my posts have to be dog related. Well, I will try to at least apply the dog stories to an interesting observation.

As I previously stated, Moki is being house-broken, so once in a while he still has an accident.

Moki is being crate trained as well, so when we leave for the store, or go to bed at night, Moki goes into this crate. I got back from somewhere the other day with the kids and walking to the house and right away smelled something was "afoul". I opened the laundry room door and there was Moki, in his crate, full of his own "No #2".

Dogs don't generally have that issue in there crate cause they are by nature, clean animals and don't like to sleep where they poo. Well, Moki must have not felt very well, cause the nature of his accident was pretty messy. He had it all over him, the crate, his bed. It was a real mess and I was pretty grossed out by it and felt a sense of disgust when cleaning it up. I was not however mad at the dog, just felt bad for him and myself.

The thought hit me when cleaning this mess up and giving Moki a bath. This is what God himself must feel when we sin. It's almost like walking in and getting this whiff of odor and then the visual picture of "our sin" is even worse.

But I believe that like myself, God is not so much mad at us as he is disappointed and a little grossed out.

When I walked into the door, Moki looked at me as if to say, I am sorry, I know I made a mess here, it's gross, I wish I had not done it. Now you are the only one who can open this crate and get me out of this mess.

God as a father and our "Shepherd" must feel similar if we tell him we are sorry. He picks us up, lifts us out of the mess we made, washes us and makes us fresh and clean as I did Moki.

That is not saying that for a time we don't have to live in our filth, and there may be other consequences, but God does not want us to suffer forever.

I have been struggling for some time with how I view God. Is he a judge or a father, is he watching over us with a whip and a shepherd's staff?

I want to think that God is a loving father who does not like to leave us in our nasty mess, but would rather clean us up and make us right again.