A Gift
And the Lord said, " I will give you a gift, a precious gift that will
gladden your heart and make your life richer and happier than you imagined
possible. There is a small problem attached to the gift, a bit of
generosity is required of you. You must, whenever the time comes, be
willing to give the gift back to me. That will be a test of your
confidence in how your life is unfolding. You must be willing to part with
that gift even though it has become terribly precious to you. I do not ask
you to be unemotional; you may grieve and cry and feel all the normal
natural feelings that arise when you lose something precious. That
certainly signifies that the gift was a true treasure to you and that it
has been a blessing in your life.
The difficult test is that you love me enough to permit me to take your
treasure away from you so that it will be with me. You are faced with a
dilemma; are you to risk some sadness and grief far down the road in order
to gain immediate joy and companionship? That is your question; that is
your choice.
What I will give you will be a stranger at first but the manner and the
nature of it will be to insinuate itself into your soul and to become part,
a lovely part, of your life. You will find this new friend to be anxious
to please and amenable to training. You will find that it becomes part of
your family and will add much to the harmony of that family. It will teach
you lessons you didn't know you needed and it will affirm its love for you
in a hundred, nay a thousand different ways. It will bring joy in the
morning when the day is just beginning and it will bring peace and
contentment as it sleeps by your feet and asks nothing more than to love
and to be loved.
That stranger will become a friend and then a companion and a trusted
ally. That stranger will teach you more than a little about its kin and
the manners and maxims of the denizens of its world. You will see and hear
your world through a new set of eyes and ears and, if you pay attention,
you might get a bit of an idea of the importance of the world of
smell. This isn't difficult knowledge to gather in the presence of this
gift. You only have to watch, listen and hear.
I can almost guarantee that when time comes for me to call this gift, this
"loaner" friend, home you will be heart broken at having to give it up. If
you have a heart at all it will break. But this is a loan and you do not
really "possess" it. It is yours for a while and then it has to come home
to me. You must be willing to suffer pain if you hunger for joy. You must
be willing to lose it all if you are given the world. But even if your
life will never be the same, you cannot help but change for the good. Your
life will be spangled with memories of joy and satisfaction; of pride and
humility. You will be left with wonderful memories and you will be left
yearning to repeat that experience again.
I'll be there with another loan. I'll be there with a new being that will
be as different from the first as different can be and you will learn to
love it too. It will never be the way it was but it could be even
better. All I ask is that you have an open mind and a heart that will hold
a dog.
by Bob Blakely