Growing up, my parents would watch the news program 60 Minutes nearly every week. For many years I was not quite old enough to grasp the ins and outs of the news coverage, and frankly, I was not all that interested. But I loved that warm old man who would come on at the end and talk about stamps or letting the dog out and draw out these wonderful life-lessons from everyday events.

One of the odd things about being a pastor is the continual hunt for sermon illustrations. While I don’t include an illustration in every sermon, they can be helpful, and it’s often the illustrations that will help people first to remember and then to internalize the content of a sermon.

Watching life with such an eye is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, you find yourself continually analyzing life’s events in view of God’s Word, wondering what theological truth picking up child toys can drive home. On the other hand, I sometimes find myself wondering if I don’t have a bad case of Rooney-itis, over-analyzing every event in search of the cutest story I can find to tug at the proverbial heart-strings.

I had just such a moment the other day thinking about one of my dogs, Baxter. Baxter is a Golden Retriever. For several years, my wife has wanted a Golden Retriever, so when we moved to Texas, from an apartment into a house, that was one of the first things on her mind. We bought Baxter as a puppy. He’s a great dog, but as you may know, Golden Retrievers can be large and a large puppy is not always the best addition to a home of two (now three) boys!

Our boys have a love/hate relationship with Baxter. They do love him, but he’s still very much in that puppy phase and being as large as he is, he often hurts the boys unintentionally. They don’t like going in the backyard to play because, in his excitement, he often knocks them over. So, as much as we loved Baxter, we made the decision that he just wasn’t the right fit for our family and we gave him to another family in the church who lives up the river.

Everything seemed fine. The new family loved Baxter and with no small children, his size wasn’t as much of an issue. Until five months later when Baxter showed up at our doorstep. My family and I pulled up in the driveway when who should come bounding up the road but Baxter! It seems that he found his way out of the new yard, he walked up the river, into our subdivision and to our doorstep, five months later!

We returned Baxter to the new family, thinking that he maybe he had just wandered a bit too far and happened upon our house. We didn’t think anything of it until he showed up the next day, and the next, and the next. For seven days in a row we returned Baxter and he returned himself to us! Finally, we realized that this was our dog whether we thought so or not; his loyalty won out.

Of course, the Rooney/sermon illustration of these events blares like a megaphone into our consciences. What a rebuke it is to us that a dog expresses more loyalty to owners who didn’t want him than we do for our Creator and Sustainer. Man’s lack of loyalty is often the focus Scriptural rebuke. Reminding us that Scripture is not necessarily “G” rated, God often refers to His people as “whores” (Exodus 34:15-16, Judges 2:17, Psalm 106:39, etc.).

In his song “Wedding Dress,” Derek Webb sings the painful lines “I am a whore I do confess, I put you on just like a wedding dress and I run down the aisle. I’m a prodigal with no way home and I put you on just like a ring of gold and I run down the aisle.”

Ultimately, the root of the problem is that our pride convinces us that satisfaction can be found outside of God and His plan. Has a greater lie ever been told? Oh that we would “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8). The key to overcoming our disloyalty is not to try harder to but “hunger and thirst for righteousness” (Matthew 5:6) above all else, to pray for that divine discontent that will allow us to find our satisfaction only in God.