Puppies, tigers and grace

Becky Dewey explores grace and mercy through things learnt from puppies, pants and tigers.

The five-year-old boy stood by the fence in his backyard, crying.
No, not crying—screaming. “Shrill” is the only word to describe it.
Like an ambulance driving by, his shrieks wouldn’t end.
I finally pulled the curtain back from my window and peeped outside, hoping I wouldn’t have to call 000 and report child abuse or a rabid dingo.

What I saw was the last thing I expected. And perhaps the last thing his mother expected, too, because when she dashed outside to rescue her child and saw the situation, a smile snuck up on her face.
There was the little boy, standing in his trousers and yelling wildly at a small puppy that was playfully trying to depants him . . . and the puppy was winning.
Concealing the smile on her face but not the grin in her eye, the mother picked up her child in one hand and the puppy in the other, bringing both back into the house, where a certain furry someone was sure to get a time-out in the laundry room.

Spying from my window, I had to remind myself, That puppy is the test I have tomorrow. It’s my friend frustrating me again. It’s the stuff that’s so irreconcilable to me but so easy for God to handle.
Maybe the puppy doesn’t represent the heartache of losing friends forever, of war or a million evil conflicts in this world—but the dog is a wonderful reminder of all the little worries we let occupy, humiliate and enrage us. The pup reminds us that even when we sound like our roommate’s desperately annoying alarm clock, God still comes to save us because we’re His.
This is the mystery of grace. The gift we will spend our whole life trying to comprehend. This undeserved inheritance comes in two parts: mercy and responsibility.

My friend Sally recently told me a Spanish fable about a man who was disillusioned with the world. Everywhere he looked in his small village, he saw the corruptness of man—thieving, jealousy and gossip, to name a few. He saw how deeply humans hurt each other and was sickened by it.
One day, as he was walking through the jungle, the man saw an injured tiger along the path. The tiger’s leg was gashed open, making the animal unable to leave the trail.
Then the man noticed a little hare bringing food to the tiger.

It can’t be, thought the man. Animals have more compassion than people.
Thinking that perhaps the phenomenon was just a coincidence, the man came back to the same spot the next day. Again, he found the hare bringing food to the injured tiger.
What about me? thought the man. Where’s the hare to help me? And the man decided to do an experiment. He picked a place along a busy road and lay down, just like the injured tiger, waiting to see if someone would come by and help him.
The first day, no-one stopped. The second day, no-one stopped. The third day, the man was weak, emotionally exhausted and ready to give up.
Well, he thought as he sat up from the ground and brushed off his jacket. If I can’t be the tiger, I might as well be the hare.

And he got up to eat and drink and find someone to help.
Because God has rescued us from the sins that threatened to consume us, we have a responsibility to share that mercy with other people. Yes, we will screw up. Yes, we will have to fight against complacency. Yes, we may feel that God is so far away.
But God doesn’t abandon us because we’ve forgotten how strong He is. He picks us up, takes hold of our problems, fixes our trousers and carries us back home.
That’s called grace.