I sit and watch the big Rottweiler as he leaps and twirls about the backyard in his dance of joy and I reflect on the experience of the last couple of months caring for him through his recovery, and of things I have been reading and of a song I just listened to on the radio.
This joyful dog was born somewhere down south in New Mexico, a little over a year ago, and at the young age of 9 weeks he was attacked by another dog and severely injured, suffering damage to his head, crushing of one nasal cavity and giving him a misshapen face where his eyes don’t quite line up, and his jaw is off-center. We found out recently through a search of his medical records that he was bitten by a snake a little while after his first injury. This too in the face.
So the dog grew up and as he grew his body overcompensated and created a huge bony growth on the left side of his head, a growth with bony fingers pressing down into his left eye and a growth that filled up with nasty infection and created a constant pressure, probably must like a severe sinus infection to us.
Much of that story was told in a previous blog post. But today my thoughts are drawn to how things unfold in life, and how although bad times can seem unsurmountable and more than we can endure, the story is not over yet.
The dog zooms about the yard, leaping like some kind of heavy weight sumo wrestler trying to do ballet. He is both graceful and clumsy. He is exuberant! He feels so darn good and life, in his opinion, just doesn’t get any better. But it wasn’t always so for him. There was a time when all he knew was the dull ache and pressure in his head, an ache that dulled life for him, prevented a good fast frolic from being enjoyable, and I cannot but marvel at the glorious unfolding that I have been able to witness as I have watched this dog go from the misshapen Quasimodo, to the exuberant and joyful QuasiBoBo.
As I watch him frolic in the yard, I ponder the story that I read recently in the book of Ruth, a Bible book I have read frequently over the years and yet this time something else jumped out at me in the story. Naomi, the mother in law of Ruth, a woman who left the land of her birth and followed her husband into Moab. She bore him two fine sons, and watched them marry Moabite women and somewhere along the way everything went wrong. Her husband died, leaving her alone, and then both her sons died, leaving her bereft and broken.
Naomi must have had some wonderful character traits, because both of her daughter in laws wept at the thought of losing her, as she informed them of her intention to return to the land of her birth. So much so that Ruth decides to follow her and declares those famous lines; “entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee, whether thou goest I will go, thy people will be my people and thy God my God.” There must be something that shined out of Naomi’s life to have created such a bond that the daughter in law is now willing to follow her into a land where Moabites are not too popular, and to do so as a young widow.
I think of Naomi. Of how totally lost and broken she must have been. Dead husband. Dead sons. Nobody to provide for her and probably not much to live for. She tells her people to stop calling her Naomi and to call her Mara “for the Lord has dealt bitterly with me”. I can’t say I blame her for that, she for sure endured a terrible loss, and carried a heavy burden.
Yet I imagine this woman as she took her final breath and then stepped into the presence of the God that she had always believed in, when she at last could see how everything turned out in her story, when she could behold from beginning to end the glorious unfolding of the most wonderful story ever told, and one that she had played a part in. The look on her face as she realized that from the line of her daughter in law Ruth, and her kinsman redeemer Boaz, had come the Savior of the world! When she realized that the hard life she had lived, and the witness she had made to her young daughter in law, the witness that drew that young woman to follow her home, and thus meet Boaz and marry him, and have a child, who had a child, who had a child and one day, in a stable in Bethlehem a babe was born to a young virgin……..what a glorious unfolding of grace that came straight out of the broken, heartrending trials of a woman named Naomi.
And as I rise to get ready to leave for work my thoughts drift to my father, a man who suffered a lot of hardship and disappointment in life and I imagine his face, as he took that final breath and stepped into eternity, and as the Savior whom he had served most of his life unfolded the glorious story of all the lives impacted by his faithfulness. And I pause for a moment and look up, and imagine hearing my dad, from that great cloud of witnesses whisper “run, daughter”……”run your race…..the story is far from over….and what a glorious unfolding it will be!”.
Glorious Unfolding by Steven Curtis Chapman
Lay your
head down tonight
Take a rest from the fight
Don’t try to figure it out
Just listen to what I’m whispering to your heart
‘Cause I know this is not
Anything like you thought
The story of your life was gonna be
And it feels like the end has started closing in on you
But it’s just not true
There’s so much of the story that’s still yet to unfold
And this is
going to be a glorious unfolding
Just you wait and see and you will be amazed
You’ve just got to believe the story is so far from over
So hold on to every promise God has made to us
And watch this glorious unfolding
God’s plan
from the start
For this world and your heart
Has been to show His glory and His grace
Forever revealing the depth and the beauty of
His unfailing love
And the story has only begun
And this is
going to be a glorious unfolding
Just you wait and see and you will be amazed
We’ve just got to believe the story is so far from over
So hold on to every promise god has made to us
And watch this glorious unfolding
We were made
to run through fields of forever
singing songs to our Savior and King
So let us remember this life we’re living
Is just the beginning of the beginning
Of this
glorious unfolding
We will watch and see and we will be amazed
If we just keep on believing the story is so far from over
And hold on to every promise god has made to us
We’ll see the glorious unfolding
Just watch
and see (unfolding)
This is just the beginning of the beginning (unfolding)