Month: October 2021

Champ was a jokster. And he knew when he was being funny. We would go for a walk in the woods, we would play this game – he would pretend like he was the alpha and lead off. I’d let him get far enough ahead and engaged in sniffing something. I’d flip around and run quietly the opposite direction. He’d look around, realize I wasn’t there and come running toward me – often overshooting me – running by with a mouth wide open grin. We would play this “game” over and over. We both thought it was super fun.

Champ was full of drama – when I would discipline him/do dominance training (lay on top of him until he submitted), he would holler up a storm. It sounded like he was being tortured, and he would carry on for a really really long time. Champ always pushed the limits – just to see if I was really truly the boss (and I was!).
Champ loved to chase sticks – and to play keep away when he got close enough for me to grab the stick. He loved, loved to play tug-of-war and would play with his rope toy for as long as I would go along with it. He loved to bound down the stairs to retrieve his toy, and to bound back up as fast as he could go.

Champ loved me, and was so absolutely loyal, and for me. He always knew exactly where I was, and was always looking out for me. He’d post himself 30-50 feet from me – between me and any threat that might be around.
He loved Elise. When he got to see her – and only for her, he would do his best to smile a human smile, and his delight was written all over him. Champ loved Celeste too, and I’ve seen him smile the human smile for her too.
Champ was very gentle and tolerant of little kids – letting them lay on him and put stuff on top of him without moving a muscle.

Champ was afraid of little puppies. When my friend, Joy, got a new puppy and I brought Champ over to meet him, the puppy couldn’t move a muscle towards Champ but that Champ would run away.
Champ loved to chase deer. He would see one – from inside the house, or when he was hanging out on the porch, and he would take off like a shot. He never caught one, but oh, he loved the chase.
Squirrels were his nemesis. He longed to catch one – but they would run up the tree, and he would jump on his back legs trying with all of his might to reach it as it taunted him from above.

Champ always longed to mix it up with other dogs – when he saw them while we would be in the car, he would moan and whine and cry – he did that with deer and turkeys, too.
One of his signals of affection was to stick his nose down between my legs for a good ear scratching. He also loved to have his haunches scratched. If I was sitting on the floor near him, Champ liked to lay one of his paws over my leg. He would often lay between Ben and me with one paw on Ben’s foot, and one paw on mine.
Champ was always kind to me. Just in the way he approached me and hung with me. He was a great friend and went through my really tough times of feeling sick and alone. He gave me the oh so needed gift of being touched and letting me touch him. He was beautiful and elegant. His fur was a joy to touch – and it was mostly clean – in a funny way the dirt just seemed to fall off of it. I loved to run my fingers through his fur and to feel his warmth and the softness of it.
I loved exploring new places with Champ – and he loved exploring too. We had so many adventures in our four years together – hiking Crane Mountain, and alongside Bug Creek Road. Getting lost together in the woods (but always getting ourselves found).
Champ was a great friend to some of our neighbors. Mike and Carrie especially loved to see him.
Champ went everywhere I went. Each time I made the drive to Seattle, he went along with me. He loved to ride in the back seat, and he didn’t mind sleeping there when we were on the road. We would stop and explore on the way – the Coeur d’Alene River trail was a great discovery. We walked such a long way – and he explored alongside the trail with great pleasure.

Champ was such a beautiful and special dog. I’ve had dogs all of my life, but never never have I had a dog like him. My heart breaks at the loss of him. Yes, I’ll most likely have another dog, but right now I feel like I’ve lost my very best friend and companion. So, so terribly sad.

Have you ever really read the Fourth Commandment? 

^{Exodus 20:8-10}

⁸ “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. ⁹ Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, ¹⁰ but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. ¹¹ For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

Truthfully, I hadn’t spent any time reading the Bible closely until around 7 years ago when my friend suggested a reading plan that had me reading the Old Testament, the New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs every day. After about a year of doing this, something strange began to happen.  Many times, when I would do my reading, this would happen:

(Leviticus 19:3) Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father, and you shall keep my Sabbaths: I am the Lord your God.

(Deuteronomy 5:3)
“‘Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you.”

(Isaiah 56:2)  “Blessed is the man who does this, and the son of man who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath, not profaning it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil.”

(Isaiah 56:6) 
“And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it, and holds fast my covenant—” (will be blessed).

Over and over for about 2 years, many many times God would highlight and bold the importance of keeping His Sabbath. As a person who attended church on Sunday, I was really confused by this.  I had never had anyone – pastors or friends – mention this aspect of the 10 Commandments, and I really did not know what to think.

The conviction became stronger and stronger when we moved to Montana.  I sought the counsel of the pastor and the lead elder of our church (which kept Sunday as the day of worship) and met with them several times continually asking them to help me to gain clarity on this issue.  Neither one of them had any help. Scripturally there were not many verses they could send me to for a better understanding about why we worship on Sunday.  The one verse they pointed to most frequently was the verse in Acts in which the believers shared a meal on Sunday (the first day of the week) in Acts 20:7.

I began to research churches that meet on Saturday (the scriptural  Sabbath).  Locally, there was a Messianic group who met on Saturdays, but after talking with the leader, I did not feel like it was a fit.  Our only other option was the Seventh Day Adventist church, so we attended the congregation that met in a small town north of us on the Saturday following Thanksgiving 3 years ago.

A beautiful thing happened that first Saturday.  There was a potluck following the church service and was seated next to a lovely elderly woman.  As we talked, I began to ask her the many questions I had about the Sabbath (the questions I had asked my former pastor and elder).  She treated me and my questions with respect and answered this way:  That’s a good question. Let’s look at what the Bible says in answer to that question. She gave me the verses, and we looked them up together.  We read them and then discussed what they said.  Finally, she would say, “This is what I believe about that particular question, but you, Deb, need to pray and ask the LORD to give you His wisdom and clarity, and seek His answer to the question in His Word.”

Over and over, I asked my questions, and I was always met with kindness and respect.  She spent about an hour and a half with me guiding me to what the Bible said about the many questions I peppered her with.

We continued to attend the Sunday church, but began also attending the Seventh Day Adventist church in Kalispell, Montana.  We met many others who genuinely loved and studied the Bible, and there were many rich conversations about the Bible – and no question was ever met with disrespect.  It was a wonderful season of growth in knowledge of the Word of God for me.

With that as the backstory, recently I had a very disorienting “ah-ha”.

I have loved education, science, medicine, the human body, and all of the elements of nature all of my life.  I learned the theory of Darwinism and the elements of evolutionary theory.  I learned the theory in which the universe began with a “big bang”, and after millennia, life forms began to evolve.  None of this had raised any questions for me – most of my life I was an atheist and this theory seemed adequate to explain what I knew and what I saw around me.

Let’s return to the Fourth Commandment….  “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

The “ah-ha” was this – when I worship on the Sabbath (Saturday, the Seventh Day), I am in my actions affirming my belief in what is said in the entire commandment.  I am affirming that God has every right to ask me to worship Him as He would have me worship Him, on the day that He has called for me to worship. I am affirming that I believe in a God Who is powerful enough to create everything I see, and that which I cannot see – all things – over a period of 6 days.  Oh my!

I have been rocked to my core.  What I treated as a myth – that God created all things in six days – is not a myth.  If this “myth” is not a myth, the God I worship is so awesome, so powerful, of such infinite intellect, such a God of wonder! Can I believe in and worship THAT God? Absolutely!!

If you were to think about it, what question above any other question, has had the biggest impact on the history of humanity?

It struck me recently that there is one question that has been asked (and continues to be asked), that rewrote the entire story of the universe. 

After the universe was created, the man and woman lived in a beautiful, lush, paradise.  They met up with an unfortunate character.  Let’s read how that went:

Genesis 3:1-5

He (satan) said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘Youshall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” ² And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, ³ but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” ⁴ But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. ⁵ For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

The question; “Did God actually say…?” Is the powerful question that changed the entire reality of everything in the universe.  The question caused the woman to doubt the truth of what God had said earlier to her husband:

(Genesis 2:15-17)

¹⁵ The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. ¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, ¹⁷ but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

When the woman and her husband took and ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, death, corruption and evil entered not just them, but all of the universe. Prior to her/their action, all was perfect – full of life, abundance and beauty.  The doubt cast upon the word of God, and the action that came out of questioning the veracity of what He had said changed the trajectory of all of history.

I have personally wrestled with doubt about the truth of the Bible.  It is such a fantastical story! How could it possibly all be true?

If the Old Testament is true, then there is a God Who is awesome in power and intellect Who created all things in just six days.  How do I reconcile that with the theory of evolution?  And what about Noah’s flood?  That does not jive with the theory of evolution either! If the Old Testament is true, how do I reconcile the God of love of the New Testament with the God Who will righteously judge all – and Who will condemn those who choose to ignore what He says to do, doing instead what is right in their own eyes.  This is disobedience and it leads to His condemnation and His wrath. 

“Did God really say?”

He is either Who He says He is, and has done what He says He has done, or HE IS NOT.  Truth is not a field of grey.  If He says He created the universe in 6 days (it was evening and then morning, the first and second… etc day – Genesis 1-2), and He did not, then He would have spoken a lie.  If He said that there was a worldwide flood of judgment upon mankind and all living things on earth, and that is not true, then there is no truth in Him and we must deny everything else He says as also being a fable.

These foundational stories are the basis for the entire Christian and Hebrew/Jewish faith.  If they are not true, there is no reason to believe anything else written subsequent to them.

For me, the challenge is to believe that there is Someone so powerful, intelligent and infinite as to be able to do all that He says He has done.  He is so utterly alien to all that I am and all that I know as a human.  If He is Who He says He is, how could I not worship Him?  If He is not, we and all of creation are most to be pitied – we are rudderless, on a path towards destruction, without hope of everything eventually being made right.

He has written His plan for all of creation in His book, the Bible.  If His plan and what He has written is true, then there is such incredible hope! 

Revelation 21:3-5  ³ And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. ⁴ He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

⁵ And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

God sent Jesus as the Messiah as an assurance to those who would accept His offer of grace. Jesus chose to take the punishment for the terrible things we each have done against others and against God as that necessary and just payment in the final court of judgment.  By his beautiful and generous offer to stand in our place for that punishment, those who accept it are completely forgiven and welcomed into the newness God is going to create.