Murphy In Cemetery

Are you feeling like God isn’t talking to you anymore? Do you remember hearing His voice clearly? Now you think to yourself, I can’t remember the last time God spoke to me, I must be doing something wrong.

That’s where I was when God broke the silence in an amazing way. God spoke to me through Murphy, my dog. Wait, before you put the book down and say to yourself, “This guy is certifiable!” I’m not saying the dog spoke. I’m saying God used an event involving my dog, to speak one of the most comforting words He has ever spoken to me.

Now that I have your attention, let me give you a little background information. I was out of town, in Michigan on a hunting trip. Nora, who would later become my wife called, “I found a dog. Can we keep him?” She blurted out so rapidly it was if dog and Can were one word. She couldn’t wait to tell me about how he could find this tennis ball she got him by smelling around. He has a great nose! I think he will make a great hunting dog! Obviously she had prepared what she was going to say because she said all that in one breath. She had a hurried, excited tone to her voice. It resembled what it would sound like if you took a recording and sped it up a little bit

Trying to slow her down I calmly asked, “What breed of dog is he?”

“I’m not sure” she responded.

What does he look like, how big is he, roughly how much does he weight? I probed.

Well, he’s black, and has long really soft hair, and a great nose, she said emphatically. “Well, he’s small,” she said reluctantly, then quickly added, “Which will allow him to get into all the areas where game birds like to hide.”

I asked a few more questions as I tried to form a mental picture. This back and forth questioning went on for a while because she just kept telling me what a great nose he had and what a great hunter he would be. Eventually I acquired enough information to declare, Nora, That is not a hunting dog!

“But he’s so cute, I’m sure you will fall in love with him when you see him” she said with a sort of pleading, high pitched wine in her voice.

I could tell I wasn’t going to win this one, not in this round. So, I rang the bell and set the stage for round two at a later date. Well, before we can make any decisions about keeping him, we have to make every effort to find his owner. If he was your dog, and was lost, would you want the person that found him to keep him, or try and find out who owned him? It wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but she reluctantly conceded.

Okay, I’ll call the pound, and let them know I found him she said sheepishly. But can we keep him if no one claims him? She said in that excited tone again.

“Let’s wait and see if someone claims him before we decide to keep him. I’ll be home before the time comes to make that call,” is how the conversation ended.

I was knocked down for the count in round two. Nora was right. I fell in love with Murphy the first time I met him. Everybody fell in love with Murphy instantly. He had this endearing, antagonistic personality. Murphy was a mutt. He looked like a Cocker-Poodle that had been pressed low to the ground and stretched out into a Dachshund’s body.

Murphy loved to play. And he loved it more if you played with him. He was full of energy and it was contagious. If you didn’t catch it from him, he would force it on you. When he wanted to play, he had numerous strategies to get you to play with him. He started with cute. He would sit in front of you, lower his head, and look up with his big brown eyes the way people look over their reading glasses. It was so cute. If that didn’t work, he would grunt at you. Murph was the most vocal dog I’ve ever known. He had several different sounds he would make to communicate different things. Okay, I admit it, my dog did talk to me. I understood what he was saying. It was easy, because for the most part he said, “Let’s Play!” Murphy was The Lord’s way of preparing us for our son. They both had only two speeds: high and off. When Murph wasn’t sleeping, he wanted to play. I learned, if I wanted to sleep at night, I had better play with him several times a day. If I neglected to meet the required amount of “play time” with Murph, what would happen is: just as I would be about to fade off to sleep, I would hear that familiar grunt. I would open my eyes and he would be sitting right in front of my face looking at me. The look on his face would say, “What are you doing, it’s time to play.”

It was almost as if I could hear him say, “You can’t go to sleep now, I’m not going to let you.” Remember, Murph had an endearing, antagonistic personality. I’ve explained the endearing, the antagonistic would come out at times like this. The other aspect of Murph that bears mentioning is: he was REALLY fast. He would taunt you. Daring you to try and swat him, because he knew you couldn’t touch him. He was way too quick. He would just keep pushing my buttons. What he really wanted was to get me to throw something at him. He would dodge it, then pick it up and place it in front of me, saying “Try it again.”

I hope you get the picture. Murphy loved to play. He lived to play. But, there was one thing Murphy loved to do more than play: chase squirrels! The mere mention of the word squirrel would wake him from a dead sleep.

To illustrate the impact saying the word squirrel had on Murphy, I’ll tell you another story. Nora and I had Murphy with us as we paddled along the west bank of Canadice Lake. Canadice Lake was about an hour south of where we lived. It’s in the Finger Lakes Region of New York, and had become my favorite place to fish. I loved to canoe along the banks fly fishing with little rubber spiders. The bluegills and rock bass kept me entertained in between what I was really hoping for: a strike from a smallmouth bass.

As we moved silently down the shoreline close enough to shore to place my fly in the shallow water next to a fallen tree, we heard leaves rustling. We both shifted our attention to see what was making all the racket. I was first to spot a mink running playfully along the ground, then jumping onto a log which made the noise stop and start again. If you have ever seen a mink, you will know they look a lot like (don’t say the word out loud) a squirrel. Foreseeing the potential danger I proclaimed, “It’s a MINK, it’s a MINK.”

“Where” Nora inquired. As I explained where it was I kept saying, it’s a mink it’s a mink right there by the tree with the little bush by it. You know how events seem to go into slow motion just before disaster strikes? You get a heightened sense of awareness. That’s exactly what happened when Nora finally saw the MINK.

“Oh ya I see it, it looks… just… like… a… s q u i r r e l. As the dreaded word rolled out of her mouth I noticed the water all of a sudden had gone totally flat. Not as much as a ripple on the surface. I knew this was not good! Before she finished saying what I had tried desperately to get her not to say, Murphy leapt to his feet, in one motion like lightning on roller skates. In an instant he had his front feet on the shore side of the boat and was searching for the noise I’m sure he, all of a sudden, took note of. Almost instantly he located the source of the ruckus and before I had time to say a word, he had already assessed the situation and made the decision to do what he was born to do. At that moment he must have thought he could walk on water because he jumped from the boat before I had time to grab him.

Murphy must not have had as much faith as Peter because he went completely under water. When he came back up his brown eyes were bigger than I had ever seen before. I never noticed the white outside the brown area of his eyes before that moment. I got wet from the splash and even wetter as I pulled him back into the canoe. It was scary and still we were laughing hysterically. Well Murphy wasn’t laughing. He was freaked out. He shivered for several minutes (in my opinion) after he stopped being cold. That event caused him to hate the water for the rest of his life. Well, actually he loved the water, up to his chest. He was fine with it as long as he could stand in it. But don’t bother trying to get him to swim, that was not going to happen.

Murphy’s favorite thing to do in the whole world was to chase squirrels. Murphy’s favorite place to chase squirrels was Mount Hope Cemetery. I took Murphy there hundreds of times, because I knew he would be able exercise his passion. And this story is set on the absolute, without a doubt, best squirrel chasing day Murph and I ever enjoyed together.

Let me remind you, I was in a funk. It seemed God had abandoned me. I was going through the motions. Putting one foot in front of the other so to speak. I was feeling like I must be doing something wrong. I was feeling that God must not care. I emphasize the word feeling because The Spirit had tried to break through. I had read in “My Utmost For His Highest” by Oswald Chambers something that made me hope. “To the Christian the supernatural becomes natural over time.”

When I gave God the game plan for my life, I didn’t feel a thing. But, the next morning when I woke up and read the Bible, as was my routine, it was as if I had previously been reading a foreign language Bible. I could look at the words and make sense of the stories. But on this morning everything had changed. It was as if someone had switched my Bible and I now had one written in English. Every word was clearer. Every concept more easily comprehended. The words came to life. Throughout the day God was speaking to me. To little ole me. Six billion people in the world and God has time to talk to me. That’s amazing, it was so exciting, I was one of those new believers that wanted to tell everybody about The Lord. What was most exciting to me was not that I was forgiven, it was the mere fact that God would take time to talk to me.

That regular, communication with God lasted for a year or two. It wasn’t as if I was hearing deep spiritual truths from God all the time. He was guiding me through my everyday life. He would whisper a word in my heart when I was in one of my college classes.

Once there was a heated debate going on about Punk Rock. There were young Punk Rockers in the class and older students that were intolerant of them. The two sides had been going at each other for several minutes. I was thinking to myself, I felt nothing, I was analyzing my thoughts and realized I had no opinion on the subject. At that very moment the professor searching for a way to get out of the discussion that was approaching an argument said, “Dave, you have been kind of quiet, what do you think?”

Before I could get nervous about being put on the spot in front of all those people, The Lord whispered to my heart and I said to the class, “I think they deserve a chance to grow up, like the rest of us.” Silence fell on the room like a brick. Nothing was spoken for at least 15 seconds. Eventually the professor said, “Okay then let’s move on.” He smiled at me and with his eyes said, thanks for getting me out of there. There was another look in his eyes, something deeper was being mused. I think it was a look Jesus saw frequently as he walked the earth. You see God had just spoken, but the words came out of my mouth. I was a 24 years old, long haired college kid. Who are you? That was what the inquisitive look in my professors eyes said to me.

Then there was the time I had a list of about 10 errands to run. I mapped out the most efficient way to accomplish them in the least amount of time and wrote numbers next to them on my list. Bank had a 1 written next to it. As I grabbed my keys to head out the door I heard The Spirit say, “Go to the bank last.” But why I thought, it’s the closest. “Go to the bank last” I heard clearly again. Well, I guess I could do the loop backwards, I concluded. Off I went, running errands starting with the highest number and working backwards. As I walked up to the bank a couple hours later, it was obvious something was going on. There were several people standing outside. What’s going on I asked a woman I recognized worked at the bank. “We were robbed 2 hours ago, the bank’s closed” she told me. I asked what time. My suspicion was confirmed, if I hadn’t listened to The Spirit, I most likely would have been in the bank when it happened. Wow, You are amazing God I thought to myself as I walked back to my car.

So, here I was, God is not talking to me anymore. That excitement turned upside down was bordering on spiritual depression. I should point out, this was in my spiritual life. In the natural realm, life was good.

On this day in the cemetery with Murphy we started seeing squirrels right away. As soon as we got out of the car, we spotted a squirrel and Murphy took off like a lightning bolt. As soon as he chased that one up a tree, he spotted another one. Without hesitation he tore off after that one. Then another one. I wasn’t taking Murphy for a walk, I was following. The squirrels were leading as if we were on a scavenger hunt. One lead to another and that one lead to the next. Occasionally I would see a squirrel that Murphy couldn’t see. With a word or a whistle, I would get his attention. He would stop in his tracks to look at me. He knew I would point him in the right direction. Murphy would take note of where I pointed and begin to move in direction. Invariably he would spot his quarry and he was off to the races.

We always saw squirrels in this section of the cemetery, but not like this. This day was five to seven times better than the best day we’d seen previously. It was unreal. Did you ever feel like you were living in a dream? I was having to walk briskly to keep up, but it was as if I was floating not walking. Murphy was having the time of his life, literally! It wasn’t a conscious thought I had, but this was THE best day of Murphy’s life!

I had a smile emanating from my heart that spanned my entire face. This smile was turning into sheer joy that began to bubble out as laughter. I was snapped out of this dream state when I saw a squirrel on the other side of the road and a car coming toward us. Murphy was smart, but he was oblivious to the danger cars presented. That’s why I like to walk him in the cemetery. We almost never had to deal with cars. My overwhelming joy turned to dread as reality sank in. If Murph saw that squirrel and took off after it he would be on a collision course with the approaching car.

I whistled and yelled, “Murph!” He stopped instantly and looked at me. I watched the car. Murphy fixed his gaze on me for a few seconds and then turned to continue his quest. “Murphy” I yelled again. He looked at me with this look on his face that screamed “WHAT.” Just a couple more seconds… there the danger had passed. I said “Okay Buddy.” Murphy turned, looked around, almost immediately spotted the squirrel I had seen and off he went. Right across the road. As I watched Murphy close in, the squirrel spotted Murphy charging toward it. The squirrel looked around for the best tree to escape to. That brief hesitation allowed Murph to close the gap considerably. The squirrel started running toward safety as fast as it could, but this was going to be close. Instantly I was transported back to the earlier dream state. The joy actually bubbled out in laughter as Murph almost caught the little critter as it leapt onto the tree.

In that instant God said to me, “This is an illustration of your life and our relationship. I am enjoying watching you enjoy the life I have given you.”

God was there! He had been there all along and He was pleased with me.

I heard those words as loud as if someone was standing close enough to me to have their hand on my shoulder, speaking in a normal voice. It was loud and clear. Not an audible voice, I have never heard God speak from outside me, it has always been inside me. When He speaks, the voice is my voice, it sounds just like any other thought I have. More times than not, His voice is closer to a whisper. Not so soft that I have to strain to hear it. A still, soft, even keeled voice that is one or two clicks lower in volume than my thoughts. This subtle difference helps me recognize God is speaking to me when He does. In rare instances like this, it’s two or three clicks above the “normal” volume.

It didn’t end there. Those joyful, yet forcefully spoken words were just the initial flash of a “light bulb” moment.

I didn’t hear the rest like that, but the meaning of the illustration continued to unfold. It was like I was standing in a dark room. God’s voice lit up the room. There I was, looking around, discovering all there was to see. At those times you can take in your surroundings much faster than you could explain them to someone. It was as if what I was seeing was being explained to me, but in a much different way. This was not in my voice or any other voice. The meaning was unfolding faster than I, or anyone could speak.

It reminds me of the time in 6th grade, I touched the little 2 inch long green wire on a plug that was plugged into the wall. In an instant, I received information that took me a while to explain to my friend that asked, “What happened” after they saw me jump. Or another way to illustrate it would be a black and white photographic print. The light from the enlarger shines onto the paper for only a couple seconds. All the fine detail has been transferred to the paper. Then it takes a couple minutes in the developer for all that information to be revealed in the photographic print.

Now let me attempt to explain the depth of what was revealed to me that day.

The super-natural had become natural. I wasn’t hearing His voice, because I was use to it. It had become familiar.

What I was thinking were my thoughts was The Holy Spirit. I was flowing in God’s will. I had reached the place of: Pray without ceasing. Constantly communing with God. If I didn’t think He would speak to me anymore, all I had to do was start to head toward danger. Like Murphy and the car.

God was there! He had been there all along and He was pleased with me.