Tuesday, May 6, 2008

God and the canines

Sometime during the boring drudgery of Mr. Marinell's high school English class, I taught myself to be dyslexic. Most people try to avoid this learning disability; I sought it out. True story. Hey, I've never been accused of being conventional.

I sat in the back of the classroom reading words from right to left (note: this is why I excel in the Cranium "GNILLEPS" category). Most of the results were fairly unproductive. For every "TARA is 'A RAT' spelled backwards" revelation, there were a hundred "INSTANT is 'TNATSNI' " types.

Every once in a while I'd read something interesting. DENNIS is SINNED. EVIL is LIVE. And, most importantly, DOG is GOD.

For a long time I thought of the dog-God parallel this way:
My dog loves me. He's never, ever sad or indifferent towards me. All I feel from him is love.

Now I'm trying to learn more from Dog = God:
Anyone who's ever seen me drive knows I'm not a patient person. It applies to other walks of life as well. Why is this taking so long? don't you want to get there faster? Why is Aspect X of my life taking so long to develop?

But now I'm trying to think of it in God's time. To Him, the time I have to wait for a job promotion is no time at all. Three more years to get my PhD after graduate school? Also not a long period of time (though it sounds like a small eternity to me).

So how can an impatient, I-want-results-and-I-want-them-now person like myself come to grips with God's time? I can think of my dog. See, to him (or any animal), time is moving faster than it is for us. We've all heard it: one human year is seven dog years. You know that feeling when you return from work and your dog treats you like he hasn't seen you in years? And you can't understand why he's so excited, because it's not like it's been that long? That's with a seven to one ratio. Now imagine God's ratio with us: eternity to one. Here's hoping that thought can (mind) (mind) me of God's timing.

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