Dr. Andy Mathis became a veterinarian many years ago because he loved animals. He worked at Granite Hills Animal Care Center near Athens, Georgia. Working around animals day after day, he had learned to understand what they thought or felt by the way they acted.
Graycie was a young dog who drooped her head, dropped her glance to the floor, and tried to hide in a corner whenever people approached. The doctor understood by these things that she had been abused and neglected by the people who once owned her.
A few days before, a lady driving down a country highway had found Graycie wandering all alone in pitiful shape and had brought her to the Animal Care Center. The doctor guessed she was a pit bull mixed breed and about a year old. She had short, gray hair and gray eyes, which is why someone at the center named her Graycie. She might have been a beautiful dog if she wasn’t in such bad shape. She looked nearly starved to death. Her rib cage stuck out like the ribs of a boat stripped of its planking. For her size, the doctor figured she should have weighed 35 pounds. Graycie had suffered from hunger so long that she tipped the scale at only 20 pounds. She also suffered from dehydration and hypothermia. Dehydration happens when an animal doesn’t get enough water to drink, and hypothermia is the condition of having a low body temperature. All these things made Graycie deathly ill.
After Graycie was dropped off at the center and had been checked over, Dr. Mathis called the staff together and said, “Y’all come here and help me decide what to do with this dog. She is so bad off I am not sure we should use our limited resources to help her. What do you think? Should we try to save her?”
His staff looked at the dog briefly and then unanimously responded, “Save her.”
That had been a few days before. During all that time, the dog had barely tasted any food. It was like she had given up wanting to live.
At the clinic she had been medicated, washed, and given a nice clean, comfortable place to rest up in a pen. She had fresh, clean water in a steel bowl and a food bowl filled with a name-brand dog food, which she refused to eat.
The Secret Ingredient
One morning, Dr. Mathis skipped breakfast and went directly to the clinic. After making the rounds and checking up on his animal patients, he got an idea for how he might help Graycie. He knew Graycie needed a friend. She needed to be able to think there was kindness somewhere in the world. So he took a steel bowl like the dogs eat out of (they were very clean and sanitized) and poured himself a bowl of granola cereal and milk. He stuck a spoon in his shirt pocket and filled his steel coffee cup with coffee. Then he walked to the pen where Graycie was cowering in the corner. Without even looking at her or calling her name, he casually opened the door to the pen and entered. The pen was very clean. He calmly and deliberately sat down on the concrete floor within reach of the dog and started eating his granola and sipping his coffee. He did this like the dog wasn’t even in the pen with him.
After a few minutes of eating, he reached a hand over to the dog’s food bowl and took some food out of it and held it up to her mouth in the flat of his hand. Graycie took it gently out of his hand and ate it, and then she lowered her head and started eating the food out of her food dish. The doctor then went on to eat the rest of his own breakfast as if it was the most normal thing in the world to eat breakfast sitting on the floor in a dog pen. During the whole time, he didn’t speak to the dog. A few times he just reached over and gently rubbed her behind her ears.
The doctor sat where Graycie sat, ate where she ate, and drank where she drank. After he finished eating, he got up and left.
Dr. Mathis felt hopeful afterwards. He felt like the dog had made a big step forward that morning towards recovery. She had allowed him to befriend her, and she had eaten a wholesome meal for the first time in a long time. The good food would help her get back on the path to health. The doctor knew she had a long road ahead of her for recovery, but it was a good beginning.
God’s Kindness
Abused and neglected, Graycie needed to know such a thing as kindness still existed in the world. Many people living today don’t know about God’s kindness either. Living without a relationship with God, they don’t know about the Saviour who loves them and gave His life for them.
Not knowing God and His kindness, they daily prove the sad truth of the verse, “The way of transgressors is hard” (Proverbs 13:1515Good understanding giveth favor: but the way of transgressors is hard. (Proverbs 13:15)). Sins are actions, thoughts and desires that are contrary to God’s right ways. Sin always leads souls away from God, who is the source of all goodness. It separates them from the love of God and instead places them under the influence of the prince of the power of the air — the fallen spirit that now works in the children of disobedience. Satan is the great abuser of the human race.
God was not pleased about this state of affairs. Even before He made the world, He drew up a plan of salvation to draw souls back to Himself. In this plan, He would send His Son into the world. The Lord Jesus Christ would be born as a baby, grow up to manhood, and go about telling others many truths about God. The truth of His preaching would be confirmed by the miracles He performed on those who were sick and infirm.
He ate, sat, slept and walked among us. God became a man and visited the earth.
Why did the Lord Jesus come? He came so humankind that had fallen away from God might see how much He loved them. He came because He wanted the relationship that had been broken by sin to be restored, so that souls might be able to live a life of faith and love. He came so that men and women might see God was a far better friend to them than the devil. He wanted them to realize that they didn’t need to stay under Satan’s dark power, but that God intended far better things for them.
So that we might return to God, He even gave His life on Calvary’s cross.
No one ever loved you like God does! No one ever wanted to bring goodness and kindness into your life like He does. Will you return to His love?
The first step in returning to His love is to repent and believe on the name of Jesus Christ to receive the gift of eternal life. To repent of our sins means to come to see them for what they are, hateful and destructive in God’s sight, then turn away from them, and no longer do them. Then He wants us to put our trust and confidence in the God who made us. When sinners put their faith in the Lord Jesus, God forgives their sins and sets them on the road to heaven, a road they have never been on before.
Dr. Mathis did what he could to be friends with Graycie and to get her to eat again. The Lord Jesus has done all He could to bring fallen sinners back to God by becoming a man, coming to this world, and even going to the cross to suffer and die for them.
When the good news of His love and grace is presented to you, will you receive it? Although it might be a neighbor, a friend or a preacher who presents the gospel to you, know that it is ultimately the Lord Jesus Himself who is holding out the wonderful truth of His salvation to you and is waiting for you to take it. “O taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:88O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him. (Psalm 34:8)). Take the salvation He freely offers. He truly is the sinner’s friend.
Discover more of the unearned favor of God in Work-Free Zone.