Faith In Fiction | The Lost Dog
It was a dark and stormy night. No, not really. It was a dusky, winter evening in a small suburb of San Diego with a rare rainfall hitting against the roof and a gentle hint of thunder in the distance.
As I sat comfortably reading a book, I casually looked up to see if my two dogs were sleeping peacefully or playing quietly with one another. Buddy, the older dog (now 11 years old), was sound asleep on a blanket in the corner of the couch. I glanced around for Molly, the younger, mischievous dog, but didn’t see her.
I put down my reading and walked into the kitchen, suspecting she’d gone in hunt of an evening snack or water. To my surprise, she wasn’t in the kitchen. Slowly at first, I walked through the house calling her name, wondering where she would have wandered off to. When there was no response within a few minutes, I became concerned. Molly was a rescue dog who’d been found running in the middle of a busy thoroughfare a few months earlier. Before I’d had an invisible fence installed for her safety, she’d been a doggy-sized escape artist, dashing out the front door whenever a split-second opportunity arose.
Picking up my pace, I grabbed Molly’s favorite treat and walked through the house calling her again with Buddy following closely on my heel. When there was no sign of her this time, panic began to set in. Grabbing a flashlight, I searched behind and under the couch and then searched the deep recesses of each closet.
Could she have gotten outdoors? That was impossible. Or was it? I had walked outside to check the mail before sitting down to read. Could Molly have followed me out the door without me seeing her? As I started to sob, I grabbed my cell phone and called my next-door neighbor, Debbie, and asked her to go outside with me to search for my dog. In spite of the rain, she said “of course,” then asked who I was, not recognizing my voice through the crying. Together, we searched the front and back yard of my house, then her yard, finding no sign of Molly anywhere. Debbie graciously volunteered to drive around the neighborhood looking for Molly as I stepped back inside my home, planning to do another search there. Frantic, I said a quick prayer, not knowing quite how to pray for a missing dog, but pleading nonetheless that Molly would be safe from traffic and coyotes.
As I walked through the front door, Buddy stood whimpering in the kitchen. After giving him a big hug, for my comfort as much as his, he began clawing at the kitchen cabinet that houses the trash can. Oh to be a dog, I thought, smelling and begging for last night’s tossed leftovers when his little sister may be forever lost. To quiet Buddy’s whining, I opened the cabinet to remove the trash can and there, cuddled beside it, sound asleep, lay Molly! The poor dog had no idea why I grabbed her with such excitement and held her as tightly as I could for several minutes. Grabbing the phone, I called Debbie, breathlessly shouting, “I’ve found Molly; she’s safe and in my arms.” We cried together for several minutes, with no more words, just tears of pure joy. As soon as I hung up, I realized that I had just personally experienced the parable of the lost coin from Luke 15:8-10 and I had a new appreciation of that story, understanding the desperation as well as the joy of the woman in it:
“Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
When we are “lost,” God wants us to be found just as I desperately wanted Molly to be found. He wants to hold us close just as I held Molly as tightly as I could once I found her. She is my precious fur baby. You are infinitely more valuable as His deeply loved, beloved child.
