Stock still

We were in the field together yesterday, Dusty and me. Cylindrical bales of straw are strewn round the field higgledy-piggledy, and the stiff stalks still crunch underfoot as you walk across the uneven ground. Dusty doesn’t really like it much, and manages to find the alleys of grass where no seed was planted. 

I managed to coax her to the bottom of this fairly large field, but then she stopped, stock still, as she seems to do more often these days. She’s 11 now and although she still has great stamina on any walk we’ve had to drive to, and can chase down a football nearly as fast as she used to, she’s a little more ornery and if she finds a walk ho-hum, she just stops and stares at me with a look of ennui.

She was just a couple of feet away from me and as I looked at her standing there rigid as a bronze statue, I realized that actually, her little black nose was sniffing the air, turning this way and that as she caught different scents on the breeze. She looked across the barbed wire longingly – some smell was enticing her. 

I’d thought she was rigid and unmoving, but her nose was active and no doubt her mind was too.

It made me think of God. How many times do I feel exasperated that he just doesn’t seem to be doing anything, to sort out an injustice, perhaps, or deal with a painful situation, or bring healing. It feels sometimes as if he’s just not moving.

But I’ve no idea what’s going on. ‘My ways are not your ways,’ God says.

Neither are Dusty’s.