This week's reading:14, 15, 16

Chapter 14: The Unrelenting Nature of Love
Michelle starts this chapter off with two stories of loss. The feelings of loss a young boy and a woman has when their dogs are stolen. The feelings she experiences when the man she loved dies. It was at this point that she tells us of her return to church and how Jesus restored her. In the "Sound Bite" at the end of the chapter she talks about the love of Jesus.
Chapter 15: The Danger of Judging Others
God has really been pushing this message with me this week. In two different books this week I have read lessons about hte danger of judging others. One book talks about how you can't judge someone's worth based on their looks and in this chapter Michelle shows us that what we judge in others we may have to deal with in our own life. She judged her assistant's dog as being a problem because her assistant did not properly train him but then she gets a dog that is difficult to train and misbehaves in many of the same ways. She then equates this to God's love of us inspite of the ways in which we may misbehave.
Chapter 16: The Contageous Nature of Sin
Michelle starts the chapter by telling us how kennel cough made it's way through the three dogs in her household at the time; her two and a friend's dog that was staying with them. Once again she equates this to how sin can spread through a church and/or a person. The shoe pinched when she talked about pride and how some of us try so hard to get other's approval. She can give me some good lessons through her stories of her dogs. In this chapter she talked about how her male dog (the new dog in the house) was only trying to win her approval and get attention because he was overly needy for attention. Her female dog had never felt this need because she knew of the beginning that she was the apple of Michelle's eye. Michelle once again uses this to relate a lesson from the Bible in this chapter is how Jesus did not give into Satan's temptations in the desert because he knew who and what he was and that he already had all he needed. In other words he knew Satan's temptations were but hallow reflections of what he already had. In sound bites at the end of the chapter she talked about how we can learn to love things that are not good for us. She talked about if she allows her dogs to eat people food then they will come to expect that and not eat the things that are healthy for them. Again she shared how we are the same way when it comes to God and God's words.