We have a rescue dog. He came with the name Austin it just stuck.
Austin was about five months old when we adopted him through a woman that I knew through ministry. He was “on sale”, that is to say his adoption fees were half of what they would have been.
He seems to have spent his early years in a crate… his pads were pink as if they never walked on anything other than linoleum floors. He wasn’t skittish at all, just very sterile looking.
Dogs weren’t made to be sterile. Neither were we. We were created to be as the Krat Brothers would say “free and in the wild”.
So I began to take Austin to the woods with me for long trail runs… that means upwards of ten miles. The more he ran, the stronger he became… and we became inseparable. Off-leash, rapid return on one command, calling off a deer scent, back and tight to my hip….
and he began to pick up sticks, then branches, then logs… full-blown-open-his-mouth-like-a-muppet logs…. and he would carry them all the way back to the truck as he ran.
He does the same back home in the neighborhood. His record was over eleven feet long. People stop and roll down windows and marvel and proclaim “that is a big stick!” and his swagger gets more swaggerly and he gets a spring in his step….
and everywhere he goes he simply brings joy by being the free-and-in-the-wild creature whom God crated him to be.
No pretense. No posturing.
I am slowly learning how to live free and in the wild too. I inadvertently allowed myself to be crate trained by the church… it wasn’t their fault. Years of selective breeding produced “church-a-doodles”… a sort of hypoallergenic christian who doesn’t shed or make a mess and bounces around smiling at everyone looking like a teddy bear.
We bred the wild out of ourselves out of fear and control. Untamed means to be who or what you were made to be without human restrictions…
“So if the Son sets you free,
you will be free indeed.”
John 8:36
Are you free? Are you prancing down the sidewalk being whom you were meant to be? Your adoption fee was paid in full. The cage door is open. Run.