Imitate

(Mom, Dad, and Gabby.)

“Follow Me.” (John 1:43)

   “We do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are…” (Hebrews 4:15)

When Jesus came into the earth, it changed the Jesus. Jesus has always been and will always remain God, 

our great High Priest, but, in His experience as a human being, Jesus was forever changed.

            When my parents' dog, Gabby was four years old, she was out on a "walk" with my mom and dad and she was running fast, full blast, through a field chasing something. She was a great hunter. Athletic, and had a never-give-up attitude.  What she didn't see, and what my parent's didn't see in the tall grass, was a left-over irrigation pipe. The pipe had an opening about the size of Gabby's head.  She ran directly into the opening of that pipe.  She was initially dazed. Then, she staggered away from the pipe, collapsed, and lost all

movement in her legs. Gabby was  paralyzed. 

My parents rushed her to a veterinary clinic eight hours away  where they had the capability of doing an 

MRI. The doctors discovered that Gabby had ruptured a disk in her neck and tore a hole in the sheath

around her spinal cord.  The doctors said that there was nothing that they could do. They

couldn’t operate. They just had to wait and see if the sheath would heal. My parents brought Gabby
home after a couple of days with explicit instructions to handle her very gently so there wouldn't be 
 any further damage.  

Gabby had a friend in the neighborhood, Duke.  He was about the same age and about the same

personality as Gabby, if not more energetic.  Every day Duke would come over and they would wrestle.
For about an hour, they would play together. They would wrestle and run and jump.  And on the day that 
Gabby came home from the hospital. he barked enthusiastically for Gabby.  Gabby, without lifting her head, barked weakly to let him know that she was on the porch, lying down.  My parents were worried because Duke and Gabby played rough and they knew that Gabby wasn’t supposed to move or be moved.
They didn't want Duke to paw at her or even to nudge her. However, they didn't interfere thinking that 
Gabby’s spirits might be lifted in seeing her good friend. 

Mom and Dad watched as Duke walked over to the porch and looked at Gabby. He didn’t touch her. 
He didn’t paw her. He didn’t nudge her or even touch her.  He just lay down with her, eye-to-eye, 
nose-to-nose. For an hour, every day, for several weeks Duke came and spent time with Gabby
until she could run and play again. Duke was different.

So are we.  When we imitate Jesus, when we get nose-to-nose with those Gabby’s 
in our lives we know that it will cost us something…and there is no guarantee that they will be changed. 
We may even experience loss; financial, temporal, and emotional, but we will be changed. And there will be joy and we will keep coming back, day after day after day because that is what love is.  And that is what Love does.
Amen.

Church stopping. Less doing. More being.