Henry's Obsession

Although the weather doesn’t feel like it every other day, spring is in fact here. This means flowers are in bloom, leaves are budding on once naked trees, and the grass is turning from a brownish gray to a deep emerald green. For me this means swollen itchy red eyes, sneezing fits when I walk out the door, and the occasional enjoyable outdoor moment. But we will save my struggle with the first 3 or 4 weeks of spring for another time.

Yard work is a really popular activity this time of year.

As soon as we see a pretty sunny day we head out to the yard and start the clean up from a long winter. My parents live on several acres of heavily wooded land, so their clean up effort is usually pretty intense. Over the last few weekends my dog and I have tried to do our part in the clean up of their leaf covered yard. Basically that means I blow the leaves for hours on end and Henry (my dog) plays in the piles of leaves that I had so neatly made at the edge of the yard. Henry has found a new mission though. He has decided his new job in yard is pest control. After raking and blowing the leaves off the enormous yard we discovered hundreds of exits to what seems to be a huge underground system of tiny tunnels. These burrows are the home of the common pest known as the vole, also called meadow mice.


Henry has taken it upon himself to eradicate these burrowing bothers from the yard. His method is simple, he sniffs until he finds a hole and then he begins to dig. The only other thing that I have seen Henry do in his life with this much intensity is eat. His focus becomes obsessive as he digs a hole, 10 times the size of the tiny burrow in hopes of catching one of these pests. The problem is that Henry’s method is no good. He is an almost 80 pound dog which should point out that he isn’t the most graceful so all he really does is make a bigger mess than the voles did. Henry’s obsession has started to become destructive.


Here's Henry napping after his vole chasing!
When he is outside at my parent’s house all he can think about is chasing the voles. Just like Henry chases the voles we also chase things in our lives that distract us from the bigger picture and can become destructive in our lives. As we look to the Bible we see a pattern of chasers throughout. Moses chased the Promised Land, Joseph chased a dream, David chased after God’s own heart. What do you chase? My prayer is that we will be like David and chase after the heart of God, instead of being like Henry and chasing after things that are of this world that only end up being destructive to us and the people around us. Our obsession should be with Christ and Christ alone.