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A Treat For Daddy

By Guy K. Henry

www.guyhenry.com

My dogs were worried. Peanut, my dachshund, nudged Roscoe, my beagle.

“Hey Roscoe,” Peanut whispered. “When do you think our daddy is going to wake up?”

Roscoe piped up, “I’ll get him up right now. All I have to do is jump up on him and lick his face.” Roscoe prepared to launch himself into the air when Peanut gave him a good chomp on his leg.

“OW!” Roscoe yelped. “What’d you do that for?”

“I don’t think that Daddy feels very well,” Peanut explained, while picking Roscoe’s hair from her teeth. “I think we should let him sleep.”

“Oh,” Roscoe sighed, pretending to understand.

“Come with me,” Peanut bossed, “you can help me make something special for Daddy.”

Roscoe followed Peanut into the kitchen. Neither puppy realized that I had been watching them the entire time. I wasn’t sleeping because I was sick. I was sleeping because it was four in the morning. I haven’t been successful in teaching my babies how to tell time!

“I know what we’ll make for Daddy!” Peanut exclaimed, “Let’s make him a scrambled egg.”

Roscoe thought that sounded a little ambitious. “How about giving him a piece of bread?” he suggested.

“Ha!” Peanut snorted. “A piece of bread is not good enough for our daddy. Today he will enjoy a beautiful scrambled egg.”

The two dogs stood in front of the refrigerator and gave it a thorough looking over.

“He keeps the eggs in this big box,” Roscoe said. He had watched me pull eggs and all sorts of other wonderful goodies out of this strange ‘box’ many times.

Peanut walked up to the door and lifted her paw to the edge. She pressed as hard as she could, and nothing but her ears and tail moved. “Help Me!” Peanut commanded.

Roscoe stood on his two legs and placed his hands on the edge of the door. Both of my children pushed their hardest. In a moment a sliver of light shot out of the door. It grew wider, and soon lit up the entire kitchen as the door swung completely open.

My two long eared offspring stood silently, afraid that words would spoil this awesome moment, Music seemed to fill the room as they took in the sight of a fridge filled with all things tasty.

Roscoe broke the silence with the first words. “Let’s eat!” he gleefully exclaimed, still astonished by this treasure chest known as a refrigerator.

Peanut wasted no time reminding her favorite beagle that the purpose of the mission was to fix their daddy a special breakfast. Peanut then said, under her breath, “And, if we have time. We’ll help him straighten out this giant lunch box.”

“Yeah!” Roscoe cheered. He was having a hard time keeping his tongue from dragging on the floor.

Peanut spied the carton of eggs hanging slightly over the edge of the middle shelf. “There they are,” she announced.

Roscoe was already leaping into the air trying to retrieve the eggs. After two jumps his little black nose gently tapped the Styrofoam egg carton. On the next bounce he gracefully tilted his head and gently clamped his teeth around the eggs. Unfortunately Roscoe had forgotten to figure the effect that gravity would soon have on his furry self.

Roscoe and the eggs started to loose altitude. The carton popped open. Twelve bright white Grade A Jumbos slowly lifted out of their package and sailed wistfully through the air.

Peanut lifted her eyes and dropped her jaw. Above her hovered Roscoe, the egg carton, and it’s twelve former occupants.

“Thud!” Roscoe landed next to her. The carton missed them both. Then the eggs arrived. Like a machine gun they made their famous cracking sound. A few landed on the floor. Most landed on Peanut and Roscoe.

Roscoe lowered his ears and worried, “What are we going to do now?!”

Peanut took a moment to think. “Perfect!” she exclaimed. “Now I don’t need to figure out how to scramble the eggs. They’ve scrambled themselves!”

“Oh yeah!” Roscoe gleamed as he wiped away a blob of egg that was rolling towards his eye.

I was tempted to get up when I heard the ‘CRASH’. Instead I thought about how much my puppies loved me. I couldn’t ruin this moment by getting involved just now.

Peanut found a paper plate in a cabinet and grabbed it in her teeth. “Help me scrape up this egg juice onto the plate,” she commanded.

Roscoe stood over the plate and let egg drip off of him. Peanut pushed rivers of egg onto the plate with her nose and hands. After a while there was enough egg on the plate to make my breakfast treat.

Roscoe had a brainstorm. “Daddy always puts his food in that box up there.” He pointed to the microwave oven with his nose. “When he pulls his food out, it’s all smoky and smells really good!”

“But we can’t reach up that high,” Peanut whined.

“Never mind that,” Roscoe said, happy to be in charge for a change. “Just push the plate into that box over there, it’ll cook the eggs just fine!”

“Brilliant!” Peanut barked. She pushed the egg-drenched plate into an old cardboard box. “Did you ever notice how he always pushes on the box after he puts the food in?” Peanut asked as she tapped on the cardboard with her nose.

“Beep, Beep, Beep,” said Roscoe as he imitated the noise he’d heard countless times when I had punched in the time on the microwave.

“Beep, Beep,” Peanut said. She was starting to feel like a culinary genius.

Then my two puppies tapped their paws impatiently on the floor as they waited for the cooking process to finish. After a minute Roscoe couldn’t wait any more. “Bing!” he announced. Peanut dragged the gooey plate out of the cardboard microwave oven.

My proud puppies worked together to push my special breakfast across the living room and into the bedroom with their noses.

I pretended to wake up. Peanut and Roscoe sat side-by-side and gazed at me with their beautiful dark eyes. Their tails were wagging. My breakfast plate was neatly laid in front of them. They anxiously waited to see my reaction.

Some people might guess that I got mad a being awoken at four in the morning. There is no way I could get mad about that.

Some people might supposed that I’d get mad about the mess in the kitchen and the line of egg drool across the living room. I couldn’t be mad about that either. It was nothing that a couple of rolls of paper towels couldn’t handle.

I was consumed with love. I lifted my best friends onto my lap and hugged them tightly. I felt the loving licks of their wet tongues slapping against my cheek. “I love you! I love you!” I kept saying.

“Would you like to join me for breakfast?” I asked Peanut and Roscoe. They happily leapt to the ground and relished the plate of egg goo.

Love is one of those strange words. It has so many different aspects that sometimes it is difficult to understand. There is one way of describing God’s perfect love that is my favorite. That is, God’s love is unconditional.

Unconditional. That means without strings. It is without loopholes and escape clauses. God’s love is immune to the twists and turns of life. God’s love never turns into hate.

I cannot earn God’s love. Even while I was God’s enemy, He loved me! Wow! I am so glad that 1John 4:19 says “We love him, because he first loved us.” It doesn’t say, “He loves us because we’ve proved that we are worthy”. We could never do that! It doesn’t say “He loves us because He likes Fridays.” God’s love is not fickle.

Look at the word “First” in the verse above, 1 John 4:19. That means that God loved me before there was a ‘me’! More than that, before I knew what He sacrificed for me, He loved me! Go even further, when I mess up, even today, I never loose His love! Triple Wow!

Even my expressions of love to God must seem like Peanut and Roscoe’s uncooked egg. I come before Him a raggedy mess, and He still loves me! My worship is at best an awkward expression of love. In return, He shines His perfect love upon me!

God desires for all of His children to love others, unconditionally. As we learn to do this, we will often serve up clumsy platters of raw eggs. Don’t be discouraged. Just as there is nothing on earth that Peanut or Roscoe could ever do to make me stop loving them, God delights in pouring His love out on us, constantly and unconditionally!

Consider that greatest expression of unconditional love. Jesus willingly allowed Himself to be nailed to that cross. He knew what I am like, and yet He still went. He knew I’d choose the opposition over and over again, yet He still stayed on that cross.

1John  4:16 announces the most wonderful truth there ever was. It says, “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. “

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