stories: Caring for friends and their dogs

Posted by Alan Knox on Jul 1, 2009 in love, service, stories | 2 comments

This post is part of my “stories” series. In this series, I share stories of how people live their lives in response to the gospel and as a demonstration of God’s love in order to teach us and to provide an example to provoke us to love and good works. (See “stories: A New Series” for more information about this series.)

In this series, I usually write about ways that I serve other people. Today, I want to do something a little different. I’m going to tell about how some friends served me, my family, and some other friends recently. It may seem insignificant to some, but it was very significant to us and our friends.

Last week, our family traveled to Alabama and Georgia to spend time with our family. Some friends of ours (the H. family) volunteered to take care of our house and our dogs while we were gone. It was very hot, so they said one or more members of their family would stay at our house so they could let our dogs go outside and come inside regularly during the day.

The week before we were planning to leave, Maël’s (pronounced like Ishmael without the Ish) grandfather passed away. Maël’s family lives in Italy. He was not able to travel back for the funeral, but he wanted to go back the week after the funeral in order to spend time with his grandmother.

This means that Maël and Cindy would be away from home the same week that we were away from home. They also have two dogs. So, our friends, (the H. family), offered to take care of their dogs and their house while they were gone as well.

The four members of the H. family traveled back and forth between our house and Maël and Cindy’s house and their house. Each night, some of them would sleep in each house. They were willing to spend time away from one another for a week so that they could care for their friends and their friends’ dogs.

Why would they do this? I’m convinced they were willing to spend their week traveling back and forth between houses to let our dogs in and out of the house, and spend their week sleeping in different houses because they love us and because they love Maël and Cindy.

Demonstrating love is not always about doing the great things (although this was a very great things for us)! Many times, demonstrating love is simply about knowing the people and serving them in the way they need and desire to be served.

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If you would like for me to include your story in this series, please send me an email at aknox [at] sebts [dot] edu.