The Leash

The other day I crawled out of bed and plopped myself beside Frenchie’s crate. It was time to take our 18-month-old Bichon outside for his morning ‘business.’ I coaxed him toward me (he wanted to stay snuggled in his blankets. He must have known it was too cold outside for man or beast). Anyway, I sweet-talked him from the crate and let him settle between my legs, his muzzle on my abdomen. We stayed like that for a few moments as I ran my hand across his coat and rubbed him behind his ears.

“Well, Frenchie,” I said. “It’s time to go.”

I fastened his collar around his neck, then the harness around his chest. As I snapped the leash to the harness I told him, “I know you don’t like the leash, but I’m putting it on you to protect you. I don’t want you running off and getting hurt.”

And even as those words formed in my thoughts, the Holy Spirit made the application personal: “That’s why I’ve given you my Law, as a leash, to protect you from danger. To protect you from being hurt.”

When I take the time to review my life – especially my life before I met Christ in 1972 – I know the very mournful truth of those words. I still, to this very moment, some 50 years later – I still carry the scars from the times I was unleashed and did whatever I wanted with whomever I wanted to do it.

Fifty years later. Still with the memories. Still the scars. Oh! How I wish I had worn God's leash back then.

Please hear these words from an old man – don’t avoid God's leash. Don’t strain at God's leash. Stay well within its limiting length. He places His law on us to protect us. To keep us from hurting ourselves, and from hurting others.

It’s a very dangerous world out there.