Stuffed Toy Puppy WORD PICTURE: STUFFED TOY PUPPY
Scriptural Reference: Hosea 3:1
The LORD said to me, "Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes."
1. Have someone(s) read the scriptures from various translations.
2. Using a stuffed toy puppy, summarize the poem entitled The Hound of Heaven, by Francis Thompson, and distribute as a handout if desired (this can be found on the internet). In his poem, the author spoke of fleeing from God through many places and many years. He told of his attempts to hide from God as seen in nature. He said that he could not evade the calm, steady footsteps of the One who pursued him. Once the author gave into the call of Love, he found himself understanding heavenly things. Despite his wasted youth, he felt spared from death. The author finally realized that he had spent his life running from the very thing he was actually looking for!
3. My sharing, offered to spark sharing by others.
What I Shared
The theme of the poem and the scripture is that the Hound of Heaven will pursue us – nipping at our heels and wooing us to come under the Blood of Christ. For myself, it took 37 years before I realized that God was right and I was wrong. Because He would not give up on me, I was saved from the error of my ways. I think it is funny to see that God’s pursuit of me -- an iconoclastic Doubting Thomas -- was finally achieved in the most absolutely classic traditional Christian way.
My story starts on Palm Sunday 1983, when I cantankerously asked my minister if he could clarify for me this thing about the Trinity--three gods all one??? He replied, “I think of it as the book, the author of the book, and the influence of the book.” By the middle of that night, I (who had always thought that concept particularly weird) had a “eureka” experience. Eureka: it’s like water, steam, and ice! Eureka: it’s like the egg white, the yolk, and the shell! Eureka: it’s all the same entity, but in three different forms! My lifelong opinion that the Trinity was myth (at best) -– or fairy tale (at worst) -– had fallen to the ground. I had been wrong. Me? Wrong? Yes indeed. I was wrong for a lifetime of partying and thinking that “Jesus freaks” were fools.
More opinions fell to the ground each day thereafter, as if they were palm branches strewn to pave the way for Jesus riding into Jerusalem on His colt. By the time Good Friday arrived, all of my “opinions” had been proven wrong. I felt exactly like I had been crucified -- as though I were hanging right there with Jesus on the cross -– as though the “me” I had always known and loved had died.
The neat thing was that, the very next thing I experienced was resurrection. I was in the market where there was a bank of Easter lilies that looked like little trumpets. Suddenly I knew that I was one of those. God had revealed to me the error of my ways and was now showing me that I was one of those -- an instrument of God. He also told me that He was giving me a new song. The old me had died, and a new person, filled with joy and new songs, was risen from the dead. I am so grateful that God did not stop chasing after me, even though I kept telling Him to go away and stop bothering me. Thank You, Jesus, that you did not relent.
What I want us to share about is how each one of us finally got “caught” by the Hound of Heaven. What did it take for each of you to finally accept Christ’s invitation of eternal life through His cross?
Or
Another angle of the dangle: is there anything the Lord is “hounding” you about at the moment? Are you troubled, troubled about something, yet still calling it an attack of the enemy? Have you considered it might be the Lord? Maybe it’s the Hound of Heaven trying to redefine you through a course correction. I can be very quick to mistake correction as a spiritual attack. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it’s the Hound of Heaven!
All Scripture references from the New International Version of the Bible (NIV).
Copyright by Whitney McKendree Moore, July 2007