Chihuahua Audacity and the Wisdom of Humility
Years ago, I was walking along the multi-laned, major through-fare of the metropolis of Livonia, Michigan—Middlebelt Road in suburban Detroit. Cars bunched together, speedily hovering to or from the multitude of side-streets and businesses that line the lane for miles. It is a road sometimes so congested that jay walking--the ultimate pedestrian offence--could be officially labeled an extreme sport.
Suddenly, I heard the screeching of car brakes just ahead, thankfully without the corresponding sound of impact. And then another car stopping—all taking place about twenty, thirty feet away. I do one of my deeply entrenched in middle-aged sprints to the scene trying to find out what’s causing the commotion. And a third car slams on its brakes.
And what is it that’s parting the paved equivalent of the Red Sea, strutting big as life, strangely more confident than Aaron Rodgers at Lambeau Field? A Chihuahua dog.
Now in the history of Middlebelt Road, many dogs have successfully crossed to meet their appointments on the other side of the street. But in times of obvious traffic congestion, even dull-normal, vision-impaired dogs can read the top of the eye chart. And I’m told that even those who can’t have at least taken the safety seminar.
But I watched as this little dog, in fact almost the mustard seed equivalent of the dog world, successfully completed his crossing. No, this is not a little devotional about how much faith this dog had to cross the road, despite the obstacles.
He wasn’t running wildly across the street. No, he was more like strutting. And more significantly, he wasn’t visibly responding as the cars stopped to let him cross. His little Chihuahua head was held high, looking neither to the right nor to the left, oblivious to the merciful precautions of the automobiles.
And he made it successfully across the road, not even taking a moment to turn around and bark at the line of cars that had stopped to watch him cross.
It is not an uncommon offense for anyone, especially at Christmas time, to forget that their life, their work, their ability to give and receive gifts—their ability to be revived--is the by-product of not just their own sweat and tears. The Chihuahuastrut is strangely comic—even as the heavens laugh at the self-congratulatory strut of the supposedly self-made human.
Our convenient self-satisfactions are often content with a spiritual status-quo. Sometimes our subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) presumptions ignore the need for revival and change. In our over-confident journey, we can minimize the contributions of others, including God’s Spirit, and press forward blindly, even arrogantly, across the street.
The Bible is permeated with warnings about the folly of arrogance. Even the slightest, most subtle forms are distortions of reality and hindrances to the spiritual sensitivity that leads to revival. It is the Gospel of Jesus Christ that tells us of the graces and mercies that have made our life’s journey possible, including, at times, our walk to the other side of the street.
Paul D. Patton, Ph.D., is a professor of communication and theater at Spring Arbor University in Michigan. He has graduate degrees in Guidance and Counseling, Religious Education, and Script and Screenwriting, and a doctorate in Communication with an emphasis in theater arts. He has been married to his wife Beth for over forty years and has three daughters (all actresses)—Jessica, Emily, and Grace, three sons-in-law, David, Joe, and Eric, and four grandsons, Caleb Rock, Logan Justice, Micah Blaze, and Miles Dean.