lessons from my dog – Aspirational Adventures

Those who know you, LORD, will trust you;

Psalm 9 shared by Bible Society’s Lent readings

Renly and Willow assisting with my writing!!

I have noticed the more our new rescue dog, Willow, hangs out with us the more she trusts us. But it isn’t just that. The more she hangs out with our old dog Renly, the better they get on with each other. We are all getting to know each other and learning to trust each other.

With Willow too, the more often we go round the park the more she gets to know it and the regular people and dogs who walk there and so the more she is comfortable and trusting there. There is also the thing that the more she trusts me on a walk the more she trusts where I take her.

It is the same with God. The more we hang out with God the more we learn to trust God and the safer we are. I can’t remember who it was, maybe Henri Nouwen, who said that we need to get to know God in the calm times of our lives then we can trust God in the rough times.

Fourteen years ago now we went through a very tempestuous time and I know if I hadn’t built up my hanging out time with God before then, spent time devouring my Bible, praying, worshiping, reading about God, then I know I would not have been able to trust God during that time. Like Willow I build up my “hanging out getting to know God” time and knew then that I was safe with God wherever.

Again it is not about throwing requests at God, not about being busy doing things with God, but it is hanging out with God and just “doing life” with God, which is how the trust is built up.

[Though back on the Willow front – it is now 4.30pm and she still doesn’t quite trust that I will remember to feed her and Renly, which just goes to show we all need to work on trust 🙂 ]

this is the first stage of looking longingly

Relationship with God

A cafe somewhere in the UK. Photographed by myself sometime in 2024

A group of us were talking about our relationship with God and someone had heard a couple of stories from nuns who say that they are so encouraged to think of other people and other people’s needs that they forget that they have a personal relationship with God.

So does that mean we need to be self-centred to have a relationship personal relationship with God?

Well, as I’ve explored before, it does say that we are to “love our neighbour as ourselves” which, I believe, means that we can only love our neighbour as much as we can love ourselves. We can really only give to others what we can give to ourselves. I know many who would say that you see people doing good things for others who are then hard on themselves. But my question would be, firstly, why are they hard on themselves? And also wonder what their motive for being kind to others is?

For some people, and I know because I’ve been there, we are kind to others in the hope that they will like us more, will be kind back to us, others will think we are good people when deep down we know we’re not. For others, like the nuns, they have been taught to value others higher than themselves, even though this isn’t what God is saying – possibly isn’t walking in “The way, the truth and the life”

I got a great example of how we should be with God from my dog. I’d done some housework and was taking a break to finish a book I’d been reading. So I gave him a shout and said I was going up to lie on the bed and read. Well you have never seen anything so excited. He bounded up the stairs, leapt on to the bed, jumped on me when I sat down, and the curled himself up between my legs and was asleep snoring gently perfectly surrounded by me.

Now I think that is what God wants for us, for us to be excited when God says “let’s go hang out together and do nothing”. We should then be rushing to be in that place on God’s lap and then we can just let go of what is going on in our world, trust that God has it covered, whatever else God might be up to. We don’t need to talk to God, ask for things, do things. We just need to contentedly lie with God just like my little dog does with me .

As those who know my dog will know that he is at his most content when he is with me. My husband says if I go out without the dog then he’ll stand and look at the back door and he has to really encourage him to come upstairs and wait somewhere more comfy.

To have this personal relationship with God we need to remember that God doesn’t go out without us, is always there, and for a lot of the time really does just want us to snuggle close and enjoy being together.