The Gospel from a Dog

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and my dog ripped it apart all the way to Enoch and Noah.
 
The photo is of what my dog did to my holy Bible in the back seat floor of my car while I was driving down the road with the windows open and wind blowing, so I couldn’t hear her tearing it apart.
 
Why did she do it?
Because it was fun.
I should kill her.
But I don’t.
Because I love her too much.
I don’t even spank her.
 
She’s usually the perfect dog. So why did she do it? Because she loves pawing at things. And she loves pulling tissue out of boxes. The combination of a leather cover opening up to thin pages was too much temptation for her to resist. So she sinned, badly.
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Then I thought of our heavenly Father. And about the life he has given us.
We have all encountered things or felt things too much for us to resist—or at least we thought so at the time. We have all sinned, badly, by whatever definition you like.
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God is holy. Like my dog we’ve messed with thoughts and deeds we shouldn’t.
God is righteous. Like my dog God should kill us. But he doesn’t.
Because God is love. Like my dog God loves us too much. So much that he took the penalty upon himself in Christ.
 
We live in an increasingly loud, politicized, self-driven, power-grabbing world.
In the midst of it, we encounter God, who is holy, righteous, and love.
The core gospel message, brought to you by a dog.
The dog’s name, by the way, is Angel, which in the original Hebrew means “messenger.”