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As many of you know, we got a new puppy.  Oliver is a sweet little guy…some of the time.  He loves to play and sometimes gets into things he shouldn’t…and we just discovered he’s been chewing the underside of the couch.  “Bad puppy!”  Of course, he doesn’t know any better until we teach him.  But, then, when I see him sneaking away with a shoe:  I know that he knows that he isn’t supposed to do that. “Bad Puppy, you know better!”

Also, he whines when he’s stuck upstairs and we are downstairs or if we put him in a crate when we are eating or sleeping. That can be annoying…except when we remember that its just because he wants to be near us.  That is really who he is at his inner-most:  a snuggle puppy.  He just wants to be loved, touched and cuddled:  nothing makes him happier.

I think the same is true of each and every human:  we make mistakes…even when we know better, but at our innermost being: we have been stamped by God’s love.  I’m sure God gets frustrated with us, but at the end of the day we can sit down and pray: its how we get our God snuggles and how our God gets snuggles.  When we snuggle (pray) with our God, we begin to feel the love that God has for us.  Oh, and like a dog, the more we snuggle, the more we love.  The more we love, the closer we feel to God…and the more we want to snuggle (pray and be in Christian community.

Hmmm.  If you want to know if it really works?  When I sat down to write this, the dog wanted to pull at and chew everything and I was about to send him away but I thought about what I was writing and I took a minute to snuggle him.  He has settled in and is cuddled up next to me perfectly quietly.

Pastor Scott