A Dog At The Very Door

Her dog had died.

It was her only pet.  And in its dying, the dog left her—a ninety-year-old widow—alone entirely.  She had lost her husband to suicide five years ago, her only son to brain cancer five years before that.  All that remained of family had been scattered far and wide, cousins and sisters and nephews who invited her to their events but never seemed much interested in whether she attended or not.

She missed the dog.

But she would not, she insisted, get another one.

Her eyes were bad and that meant less driving, which meant she couldn’t get the dog to the vet for shots or always to the store to get him food. She had a low income as it was. She had shaky hands, and she worried about being able to give the dog his flea medicine if he needed it.  And dogs could be rowdy, difficult.  Her precious Jake had been calm and still, the best of boys, willing to slow his pace to match hers.

“And besides,” she stated matter-of-factly, “I can’t get a creature I’ll outlive.”

A year slipped by.  She grew used to life without the dog.  She yearned to have one now and again but, when church members encouraged it, she protested.  “I won’t get a dog unless God drives one up to my very door.”

Still, on longer days, she admitted she was lonesome.  The nights were very hard, especially in the winter, and especially since she couldn’t get out like she used to when she wanted a distraction.  She took special pleasure when church members visited with their pets, and always seemed a little wistful when they left.

Her sister called.  “I know you’re not going to get a dog,” she said, “but if you do, I’ll pay for every single vet visit.”

More time passed.  Her neighbor, a Christian man, was chatting with her when she listed all the reasons she couldn’t have a dog.  “Well you don’t have to drive a dog to the vet,” he said with a shrug.  “If you had a dog, I’d just take him along to the vet with mine.”

Another neighbor, another Christian man, drove his own dog to the vet one day.  The vet mentioned there was a special dog that needed someone to look after it.  The dog was four, unusually placid, and its owner had passed away.  The vet had grown fond of it: she’d provide any new owner, she said, with two years of flea treatments and a year of food.

And so it was that this woman I know and love, who has been so very lonely and sad without the dog she loved so much, looked up one morning to find a dog “at her very door,” as requested of God, in the car of a vet that was loaded to the brim with food and medicine. 

The neighbor who found out about the dog initially brought the very good boy to her door.  “Now here,” he said, handing the leash over, “and just so you don’t worry—if anything happens to you, I’ll take him in as mine.”

I talked to her on the phone today.

The dog chases tennis balls, she told me, delighted.  He’s so well-behaved.  He sits on the couch with her and she has taken to putting him in the car for tiny, safe drives.  She towels him off after he runs outside in rainstorms.  She talks to him in the evening.  “I’m not near so lonesome now.”  And then, wonderingly, she added, “Can you believe the Lord did indeed bring that dog to my very door?”

But what amazes me is that the Lord’s work was accomplished through a slew of people, some of whom had never encountered each other: a sister willing to pay a vet bill, a neighbor willing to take a dog to the vet, another neighbor discovering a dog and pledging himself to care for it if there was need, a vet willing to make provision for a dog’s needs.  A symphony, each instrument in its place, all for the glory of God and the comfort of one lonely elderly woman.

All I can think to myself is, ah, God, whenever you call for me, let me play my part.

Who knows what difference we make, after all, with our widow’s mites and tiny efforts, paltry all against what seems like vast tides of selfishness and sadness and sorrow and loss?  God transforms and redeems: the little he magnifies and makes great.  We are a church; we are a people working in concert without even knowing that we are.  God accomplishes much through his people, and much more than we could possibly imagine.

Happy Thanksgiving.