My in-laws have a sweet Irish wolfhound cross named Logan. They adopted her as a rescue dog when she was barely three months old and she quickly became the apple of their eye. She’s popular with the whole extended family and often gets compliments from strangers.
As someone who grew up in a pet-free home, it has been quite a revelation sharing a house with Logan over the last few months. I knew that dogs can’t eat chocolate, but I hadn’t known cooked bones are also lethal for them whereas raw bones are fine. I’ve learned that dogs only need one meal per day.
Still, Logan is always ready to eat. And while she has an appetite for mostly anything (a small piece of lettuce and dehydrated pears are the only things I’ve seen her not gobble up) she is especially partial to chicken. She knows when chicken is around, even before it’s cooked. It’s almost as if she can tell from the very sound of it being unwrapped from supermarket plastic that it’s chicken and not something else.
She often wanders into the kitchen and plonks herself down as we’re preparing meals. Logan hovers at the dining table, going from person to person, lingering longer by my father-in-law because she knows that he’s the weakest link. Her puppy dog eyes work best on him.
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Now 10 years old, Logan’s faith in imminent food is absolutely unfailing in all circumstances, despite any evidence to the contrary. It’s given me a deeper appreciation of Jesus’s words about dogs picking up the scraps off the master’s table.
But He answered and said, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.” And she said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered and said to her, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be to you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed from that very hour.
Matthew 15:26-28 (NKJV), emphasis mine
Logan is the ultimate proof that good things come to those who wait – and those who pester. Not only is she like the little dogs mentioned by the woman in Matthew’s Gospel, she’s very much like the persistent widow in Jesus’s parable:
One day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they should always pray and never give up. “There was a judge in a certain city,” he said, “who neither feared God nor cared about people. A widow of that city came to him repeatedly, saying, ‘Give me justice in this dispute with my enemy.’ The judge ignored her for a while, but finally he said to himself, ‘I don’t fear God or care about people, but this woman is driving me crazy. I’m going to see that she gets justice, because she is wearing me out with her constant requests!’”
Luke 18:1-5 (NLT), emphasis mine
Rather than being considered nagging, Logan’s perseverance is considered funny, part of her personality, evidence of a certain intelligence and just kind of endearing.
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I wonder if God might view our prayers that way, too.
I get weary of praying the same things over and over again – especially when there’s no sign of change or improvement. It feels so repetitive, finding new ways to say the same things and then eventually having to cycle back to the old formulations again. Surely it’s a yawn for God to be on the receiving end.
But what if he doesn’t actually find our repeated prayers tiresome? What if he welcomes our requests? And what if I had the kind of expectation that Logan has of her desires being fulfilled?
Pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere.
Ephesians 6:18 (NLT), emphasis mine
Logan’s 5pm dinner is sufficient for her survival. She doesn’t need our scraps. But oh does she want them and she sure does pursue them. Similarly, there are deep longings in our hearts that may not be essential for survival, yet they still make their way into our spoken and silent prayers.
It’s costs me nothing to give Logan the cartilage I don’t eat on a chicken drumstick, or food that’s dropped on the floor. Meanwhile, my husband and in-laws will give her pieces of perfectly good food – a bit of bread, a chip, a piece of chicken flesh – because they can. Because food is not scarce for us.
We give out of our abundance. So does God. (He’s probably more like my father-in-law and less like stingy me). We’re as dependent on him as Logan is on my in-laws for food, shelter and even love.
Logan demonstrates a single-minded, persevering faith in her humans’ ability and willingness to provide her with food, over and above what she needs to get by. Maybe we could use a little more of that unwavering, dogged prayer in our own lives.
