“I brought you a surprise, Sis,” the young man said, holding something behind his back. He brought it around in front of him to show his sister.
“A dog! We already have a dog,” Joan reminded him.
“I found it when I was driving out on the range looking for cattle,” explained Buck. “It’s hardly more than a pup. It’s a stray, and I couldn’t leave it out where the coyotes would have gotten it. It needs a home. Will you keep it?”
Before Joan had time to answer, he set the dog down, and with a wag of its tail it bounded through the open door and into the house to make friends with Aiyana, Joan’s three-year-old daughter. The little dog brushed his nose up against her and she giggled with delight.
“Looks like he’s made a friend real quick,” Buck said, watching them get acquainted.
Joan gave in; “I guess we can give the dog a home.”
The young dog’s short hair was reddish-orange except for tips of white on his tail, nose and feet. He held his head and ears erect. Joan decided to call him “Tip” because of his tips of white fur.
Tip fit into his new family easily over the next few weeks. He especially liked little Aiyana who was happy to share her food with him. They later found out that he was a “dingo” dog. This type of dog can’t bark and originally comes from the outback of Australia.
No one knows why little Aiyana decided to wander away from her home one evening. They lived on the Colville Indian Reservation, which is in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in northeastern Washington and is full of rough terrain with wild animals. When it was discovered that the child was missing, her parents searched the areas surrounding their house. When they didn’t find her, they called the tribal police who organized a massive search. The next morning over a hundred and fifty men and women began searching the rugged, rocky hills.
A searcher named Skumhiest Jack had searched all morning. He was almost two miles away from Aiyana’s house when he sat wearily on a log to rest. He was thinking about returning to the house when he saw a dog’s head with a white tip on its nose pop up through some bushes. He went to look more closely and found little Aiyana sound asleep under the bush.
Skumhiest Jack carried the little girl back to her home. He later said, “I never would have found the little girl had it not been for the dog. That dog is the real hero!”
The little girl’s father said it was unbelievable that a stray dog they had just recently welcomed into their home would have stayed with their daughter so faithfully. Happily, Tip tipped off the rescuer, and the little girl was saved.
Now here is a tip for you. You too have wandered off and are lost and need to be saved. The Bible says that “all we like sheep have gone astray” (Isaiah 53:66All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:6)). “Lost” is the word God uses for any person who is still in his sins. If you have not come to the Lord Jesus Christ to be cleansed from your sins, you are lost and headed for the darkness of an eternity without God and without hope. The Bible calls it the lake of fire.
Happily for Aiyana, she was rescued from her lost condition. You too can be saved from your lost condition. “The Son of Man [the Lord Jesus] is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:1010For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. (Luke 19:10)). To save sinners from their lost condition, He went all the way to the cross where He “suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:1818For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: (1 Peter 3:18)). Now any boy or girl who believes that the Lord Jesus suffered for his or her very own sins will receive the gift of righteousness by being cleansed from every sin. The Lord Jesus is such a loving Saviour that any who trust in Him can never be lost again. He tells those who come to Him to have their sins washed away, “Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more” (Hebrews 8:1212For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. (Hebrews 8:12)).
Are you still lost in your sins?
ML-12/22/2002