Do you think that God likes a good prank?
Recently, after a nightly walk with our dogs, I am certain the answer is yes!
Every day, I talk to God in a long running internal conversation, about the most minute of things to really critical spiritual questions.
And this conversation crescendos every night while walking our dogs, sometimes leading to hand gestures, head shakes and even verbal outbursts of joy or frustration. Sometimes I wonder what the neighbors along our route think of the big dude with two dogs tugging him along while he animatedly talks into the night … to himself.
But on a recent walk, the neighborhood -- one neighbor in particular -- received a show that likely convinces them that I’m not working with a full deck.
The dogs and I were walking later than normal, the result of a challenging day with numerous curve balls thrown in. And so I was already in need of the quiet time our 45-minute walk provides.
However, that night the dogs themselves were a tad squirrely too -- maybe because they were observing my own anxiousness? -- and so the three of us were having a fitful walk, to say the least.
There was the tangle up with a tree when we were adamant we were going to catch a low-flying crow. And then there was the chaos when we stumbled upon the McDonald’s bag full of trash that someone had kindly left on the boulevard.
So, by the time we were two-thirds into our walk, and Howie bounded around the back of me for reasons unremembered, but in the process managed to cleanly flip both of the rear clamps on my suspenders … well, let’s just say the release valve was triggered.
I stood there on the sidewalk, our two crazy clowns looking back at me wondering why we were stopped, and tried in vain to reclamp the suspenders with one hand behind my back and one holding both of the dog leashes.
My frustration boiled over, and I let out an urgent vocalization of: “Good heavens! Lord, would you help a guy out!”
Instantly, a neighbor, whom I’d previously not seen sitting in a lawn chair in the door of her garage 15 feet away because of my burgeoning fiasco, asked: “Would you like some help?”
The immediacy of the response to my plea to God actually startled me, but then my mind raced to how ridiculous I must be looking to our neighbor in that moment, and I couldn’t help but burst out laughing.
So, does God like a good prank? Yes, I believe God does.
And more importantly, I was reminded God answers us when we ask. Sometimes in the form of a good-natured neighbor who holds your dog leash while you fix your suspenders. Amen.
Devlyn Brooks is the interim CEO of Churches United in Moorhead, Minn., and an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America serving Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. He blogs about faith at findingfaithin.com, and can be reached at [email protected].