Beth Moore — If and Then
This is going to seem so terribly ridiculous but Keith and I lost, within 21 days of one another, our two beloved pets. Now we're dog freaks and my Sonny, my constant companion was 18 stinking years old -- 18! Most of my youngest daughter’s life had Sonny in it so this was a long time. I knew that one was coming. How many dogs make it to 20? Her face was completely -- she was black and her face was completely white. Who would know if my hair is white, you won't know it for a while. But hers we did not color her hair at that point.
But our little Beanie, Beanie our bird dog was only nine. Beanie had fought off a disease, a bone disease for many, many years and had just been a picture of health but we gave her medicine every day. When Sonny died, that day, Beanie went and got behind the bushes in our yard that day. And I said to her, "Get out! Because I promise you, you're not going anywhere. And get out from behind there." That dog was dead in three weeks.
Now we were all like, "But don't you love us?"
She was like, "I love you but I miss my friend."
So her body just -- isn't that crazy? But her body just gave way to that disease and she was dead in three weeks. It was so crazy.
So I have about a month left to go when I get a new puppy because the Moore’s have to have a dog. We have to fur -- we have to have like dog hair in our throats somewhere. It's just us. It's just us. We have to have it so it's never a question.
I've known other people so devastated they never got another one. I can't conceive of that. My dear friend, Janice, here at L.O.I. she lost her beloved golden retriever and she was like me, she could not have grieved it more but she had to get a new one, that's all there was to it.
So I bring in this little puppy and of course, I name her Queen Esther because why wouldn't I? I'm in Esther so I named her Queen Esther. So I have this ongoing memory. I thought, I've not been in this Esther but boy have I been with Esther, Queen Esther, I call her Star for short but she is very much the queen.
I've told you this part of the story before but it is so perfect for reading out of a portion of Esther. When I first got Star -- We are go people so they have to be go dogs and they're taught how to behave in a car immediately because we can't have any dog that cannot travel. We can't have it. So I want them to have a lot of fun. I like to drive with the windows down with dogs’ heads out of them. I like it when other people do it. I'll just drive up next to them. I love it!
I was trying to teach Queen Esther how to look out the window, and I didn't want her to jump all the way out so I had to just crack it. She would get up because she would always stand at the window and look out. So I would start to lower the window because I'm up in the front seat where I have all four controls and I'm kind of glancing in my rear view while I'm driving. So I'm cracking it down like this but for months -- for months, when I lowered window, Queen Esther went down with it just like this.
I'd bring it back up; I'd bring it back down. And I would say to her, "You're missing the point! The point is, like you stick up your head and you do it over and you get the real view." But it took forever. Now she loves it but it took forever. This is so silly because we drive past people and the window would be half way down and she would be down here looking at them.
You know? But it's such a picture of Esther because the whole book, God is not on the forefront where he is obvious by name all over the page as he is in so many other books. Picture Esther and Exodus next to one another, they could not be more different. And it's looking -- what she had to do was she had to look through the mirror darkly, the glass darkly. She didn't get to have her head out in that open air where we have very obvious revelation working through a whole different set of circumstances.
I want to read once again, I'm going to read a long portion but I want you to just go with me here, Esther chapter four. When Mordecai learned all that had been done, Mordecai tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes and went out into the midst of the city and he cried out with a loud and bitter cry. Of course, there's been a death sentence, extermination for an entire people -- happens to be the people of God no less, a death sentence placed upon them. He hears about it. He puts on sackcloth and ashes, tears at his clothes.
He goes, it says in verse two: He went up to the entrance of the king's gate for no one was allowed to enter the king's gate clothed in sackcloth. Don't you just love how they protected the leader from any of the grief? Oh, by all means. Sometimes that can happen in Christian leadership where you let everybody else handle the pastoral side. "I really am called to study. And let everybody else do that and really, I don't want any sackcloth and ashes in my presence." And we will cease to have anything to say about the scriptures because that's where it applies, right there in the real depth of life.