Call the Dog by Name

Have you ever watched a dog for someone?  We recently did for three weeks. Overall, the dog, Charlie, was a good-natured dog. His weakness was that whenever we left the house, he sprayed pee on various objects and would poop multiple times to show his distress. We did not enjoy returning home to see what he left us. He was becoming a nuisance.

One night, however, I was taking my baby daughter to bed. She speaks four words so far: mama, dada, hi, and doggie.  But as I walked her across the dim upstairs landing to the bedroom, she heard him moving at the foot of the stairs.

"Do you hear that?" I said. "That's the doggie. Where is the doggie?"

Suddenly she called to him.

"Yarlie!" 

She was staring down into the dark stairwell, and she beckoned with her hand for him to come.

I was in shock.  When I told my wife the next day that our daughter's fifth word was Charlie, she was strangely moved.

"It almost makes me want to keep him around," she said. "I can forgive him a lot of things if she likes him."

I know, personally, that I spray a lot of objects in God's house and leave poop here and there for him to clean up.

But his beloved son, Jesus, takes my name on his lips. He says my name. Not only does he call my name in the darkness, he has carved my name on his hands forever. That has to count for something.

"He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out."

"But now, this is what the LORD says-- he who created you, Jacob, he who formed you, Israel: "Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine."

"See, I have engraved you on the palm of my hands."  Isaiah 49:16