Quit Being Such a “Grown-up”!
With the sudden onset of nice weather our Dog Park got a LOT of use this week. At one moment I looked out my office window and saw a young woman (from distance I couldn’t tell if she was 14 or 24) whom I thought was in a bit of trouble. She had three dogs with her and was down on the parking lot on her backside while the dogs pulled her this way and that. She struggled to get back to her feet and I thought that they must have knocked her down. As I watched she took them to the gate and genuinely struggled to get them through. The dogs seemed very unruly. I think two of them were just large pups.
I went back to my work and several minutes later I saw the young woman climbing out of the park by squeezing through the large maintenance gate, leaving the dogs inside! She then proceeded to walk away from the park into the parking lot, with the dogs getting excited not knowing what she was doing. This is pretty clearly against the rules, and I watched to make sure she would go back to them.
As I watched, something crazy happened; she collapsed on the pavement. I jumped with a start wondering if this extremely oddly behaved woman was perhaps on drugs and was having a medical emergency. I was about to grab my phone and run out there when she popped up off the pavement and seemed to be laughing at the reaction of the dogs (they had freaked out worse than I did when she collapsed). Then it dawned on me, she was just teasing them and playing.
She went back in the park and started rough housing with the three big dogs, even dropping down on the somewhat muddy lawn. I watched and saw that she just didn’t care. She was simply having a good time with her dogs and they were having a good time with her and she really wasn’t concerned if some fuddy-duddy was looking out the window. She wasn’t there for people’s approval; she was there to be fun with her dogs.
In three of the gospels we read this story; And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it. And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them.” Mark 10:13-16.
People were bringing children, probably unruly, snotty-nosed, and loud, to Jesus and the Disciples didn’t think it was very dignified or proper, so they started to chastise them. Jesus reminded them that we need to shake off the stuffy, fuddy-duddy, “proper” way for Christians to behave sometimes and just relax, have some fun and not care what people might be thinking.