It was just a dog.

Monday's w/ Michael

This family I know owns a dog. Their dog likes to run. It travels all over the neighborhood. Everyone in the neighborhood knows the dog. They don't mind that it visits them. It's a nice dog.

A lady I know happened to be driving through the neighborhood one day. She saw the dog walking along the road. There weren't any houses nearby. She was afraid the dog was lost. She stopped the van and opened the door. She was going to check to see if the dog had tags so she would know who it belonged to. Instead, the dog hopped right in the van. So she drove to a few houses in the neighborhood to see if anyone knew who the dog belonged to, but no one was home. So she decided to take the dog back to her house, since it was such a nice dog.

When she got back to her house, she made a few phone calls to people she knew that lived in the area where she found the dog. Still, no one was home, so she left messages. She decided that if no one knew who the dog belonged to, she would keep it. It was a nice dog.

Eventually, someone from the neighborhood called her back and told her who the dog belonged to. They explained that the dog likes to travel and that is why it was so far away from it's home when she found it. She loaded the dog back into the van and took it back to it's home. It was a happy ending for everyone involved.

It was nice of that lady to stop to see if she could help the lost dog. It was nice of her to want to give it a home if she couldn't find the rightful owner. But the more I thought about this story, the more I realized that it was just a dog. It was just a dog.

There are 143,000,000 orphans in the world today. More than 127,000 of them are in the US Foster Care. We see their pictures on the internet. We hear their stories. Yet most of us don't do anything to help them. Sure, we might offer up a hurried prayer. Maybe we'll even send some money. But I can't help but wonder how many of us would have picked up that lost dog, yet turn our backs on the lost, hurting, starving children? How many of us would be willing to give a dog a home, but not a child?

I encourage each of you to pray about it today. Sincerely pray about adoption. Sincerely pray about becoming foster parents. Sincerely pray about how you can help these children.

Make it a great Monday!