Now before you think I'm totally cracked. Let me clarify my dog doesn't
talk to me, she whines pretty good when however she wants a treat or
couchtime, but I can assure you she does not talk. Nonetheless she showed
me a great lesson within a fraction of a second this morning. Each night my
son would call the pup into his room to have her quote,  "sleep at Mike's
house", as we so fondly call it when she sleeps in the room of someone. For
months on end he'd call her in there, and in the morning I'd wake Mike up,
the pup would come flying out, wriggling her butt jingling her tags on her
collar, and wanting to go outside to do what dogs do when they get up and
want to go outside. Upon her return from that duty, she invariably would go
to the top of the basement stairs, turn around and look back as if to
say... "I'm going down to sleep at Amber's house now, OK?", and then she
turn and rumble down the stairs to not be seen from until my daughter Amber
would arise or perhaps even later. Now you and I both know the next best
thing to a dog's bed is the kitchen. Our little pup, is constantly
underfoot trying to sniff out secret droppings off the counter top, or any
little fragment that she happened along. She stands guard better than a
Mexican border control in search of any morsel. If at night she will give
up lap time, a good petting or just about anything to get in the kitchen if
someone is in there rattling around. Why? It is instinctive to a dog to
eat. I mean after all it isn't the taste of the food there because most
things she swallows whole and never touches a taste bud on her tongue. It
is her instinctive response to survival, to eat when you can what you can.
If there is provision, if there is sustenance, if there is something that
is an inherent need, she will discount anything else and pay attention to
that instinct. This morning was an exception in which in a split second not
only did it recognize what she did, but god, not my pup, spoke to me a life
application of what my dog just showed me. As any other day, the pup came
out the room, went outside and returned again, but as my wife was cooking
eggs, with pans rattling and eggs sizzling, she walked right past the
kitchen, went to the top of the stairs and without missing a beat rumbled
down the stairs for her early morning nap. It occurred to me how that
ingrained habit of waking up, going out, coming in, and going down stairs
was so engrained in her, that she allowed it to subvert an instinctive
behavior of eating food. What seems to be extremely important to her was
blinded by a simple habit which stopped her from doing what is inherently
her duty of survival. It occurred to me how we can fall into that trap as
well, to have daily habits which we do, that make it impossible to consider
what we ought do. We can become so programmed to a habit, a thought pattern
that we not only fail to consider an alternative to our time or path, that
we subvert what we are destined journey. Habitual behaviors are good, if
pointed towards a goal worth meeting, such as a habit of a morning Bible
reading, but some habits are just habits we've picked up without realizing
it even and can rob us of time, resources, or money even. The first part of
this lesson is complete, recognizing the benefit of the lesson, the next
lesson for me is now prayerfully applying that knowledge, that little
lesson God showed me through my pup, and how it applies to my life
currently. Are you caught up in a habit which might pull you further from
your destined journey? Have you taken a look at your daily life to see if
perhaps you too haven't entered into a routine which you do because you've
always done it that way, or spent that time doing this or that? I'm sure
yawl have heard the old joke of the mother and daughter in the kitchen
cooking ham? No? Well I'll tell it then won't I. lol. Two women are
preparing a ham dinner. One lady grabs the ham and whacks off three inches
of one end and tosses it out and slips the ham in the pan and starts to
prepare it for cooking. The other lady says... "Why do you always do that?"
"Do what?" the first lady said. "Toss away the end of the ham like that,
that is perfectly good ham.". The first lady defends her action by
explaining that her mother had always done this from her earliest childhood
recollection, and that is was undoubtedly to cut off the dry end of the
ham. That she has always done this and it is just what you do when cooking
ham. Little did the lady know or realize, that the reason her mother had
always cut off the end of the ham was that her pan was three inches shorter
than the ham and needed to cut if off to get it to fit. Sometimes we do
similar and miss a greater opportunity or facet of our journey by failing
to  recognize those habits which draw us further away.

Brad