Prone to wander

We recently watched our …. oh, as others refer to her…..”granddog”….for a week while her family went on vacation.

This is how we traveled the hour … yes, 60 loooonnnngggg minutes….between our house and theirs….me and Reese….

Reese has a lot of issues….bless her heart…but one thing she does not do is run off.

Oh believe me, she is like a boomerang in that regard. As one of my friends would say, she is a delicate flower in need of constant affirmation and attention. You can throw a ball a country mile and in less time than it takes to blink, she is right back at your side with ball in tow.

This is a nice feature in a dog, I have to say.

We had a family dog that we all loved dearly named Mitzi. She was perfect in every way that Reese is not, but one….she was prone to run.

If she was able to slip out of her collar or slip out a slowly closing screen door….she was gone….

Many a day would find the Reimer’s running around in cars and on foot shaking a box of treats and pleading for her to come to us. Usually it was the car that got her…I guess she figured it moves faster and she could roam more efficiently.

These adventures almost always happened at the worst possible time in our hectic schedule. One day I was supposed to be somewhere and was close on time…ok…that’s not so unusual, but I was running late when she decided to run away.

I was shaking the box of treats and venting my wrath and as I poured out something to the effect that I could not understand why, when we took such good care of her and fed her and loved her that she always ran off. Mid-rant, I heard God say, “How like you, Laura”….

well…ouch….

He was right.

He has provided all that I need. He surrounds me with His love and He gives me guidelines to live in that keep me safe and nurtured.

But let a shiny new trinket dangle on the horizon or a familiar rut appear that is easier to fall into than go around and I am off like a dog after a squirrel.

Well, we are not alone, Mitzi and I….this propensity to wander is as old as mankind… I found us in Jeremiah this morning….

They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn for themselves cisterns – broken cisterns that can hold no water. 2:13

But you said, ‘There is no hope. No! For I have loved aliens, and after them I will go.’ 2:25

and….

Why do My people say, ‘We are lords; we will come no more to You’? Can a virgin forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? (anyone who has hosted a wedding for a daughter knows the answer to this one….uh….NO!!!) Yet My people have forgotten Me days without number. 2:31-32

And that is the deal right there. I can’t answer for Mitzi, but for myself it was when I would start forgetting God in my heart that I would find my mind straying.

It reminds me of the words to one of my favorite hymns….

Prone to wander….Lord I feel it….Prone to leave the God I love….

and in this song*, we learn what the secret to ending the urge to be a runaway is….

Here’s my heart Oh, take and seal it….bind my wandering heart to Thee….*

Each and every moment of each and every day, my heart …. given to Him….because the power to hold it close to Him comes FROM Him….so even as I have done my devotions and said my prayers and rise from the table to go about the tasks of the day….ever and always, my prayer between prayers must be….hold my heart, Lord, close to Your heart…don’t just hold it, bind it, with spiritual duct tape to YOU, just as You have promised….so will you do <3

*Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing; Robert Robinson 1758