Daily Devotional #1,743

I hit a dog with my car yesterday. I was driving to church on the highway I always take. I was in a group of  cars and we were all going just about 65 mph. All of a sudden, a good sized black dog ran onto the roadway  from the right side. He ran across the first lane and all of us started slamming on our brakes and he made it  through the first lane, turned to go back and then ran right in front of my car in the left lane. There was that horrible thump and my car finally stopped. He rolled down the highway and struggled to get up and then made  his way to the grass median. There were about a dozen cars stopped on the highway and fortunately no one had  turned into another car and no one got rear-ended. I pulled across the lanes to the right shoulder and called 911.  After a bit a highway patrol car came up behind me and the officer and I couldn’t see the dog anywhere. He said that the highway is all fenced on either side of the road, so probably someone just dumped the dog out on  the shoulder and took off. We looked at the damage on the front of my car and he said “The only thing you can  do now is just call your insurance company.” I got in the car and continued on to church but I could still see  clearly the panic in that dogs face and the pain after we collided. I thought about how I was going to have to  deal now with insurance and a repair shop and not having my car for a while. But I knew that this wasn’t that  dog’s fault. He didn’t know anything about a stream of cars traveling a mile a minute on a paved surface. Sure,  he shouldn’t have run into traffic, but someone else put him in that position. It wasn’t his fault. There are many  of us who struggle with that same kind of situation. We find ourselves doing things or just being people that we  know we don’t want to be. But out there, someone else touched our lives in a negative way that set up our  making bad choices. We look back and wonder why we did that, or how we got in that mess. And there are  times where getting in that situation…was not our fault. The pain, misuse, or betrayal of trust…was not our  fault. If that’s a story that you are living you need to hear Jesus saying to you that if you are weary and have  carried heavy burdens… he will give you the rest you need. He asks that you let him teach you of his  compassion and healing and help you understand how precious you are to him. You may have felt like  somewhere you just got dumped on the side of the road of life. This Jesus is there to scoop you up and carry 
you to a place of safety and healing. Let him help you today…he just a prayer away. Here’s our Bible verse for  today…  

Matthew 11:28-30 NLT Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and  I will give you rest. (29) Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart,  and you will find rest for your souls. (30) For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”  
Remember I’m praying for you!  
With love, PJ