In case I haven’t mentioned it before, I love my dogs. 

There is Rosie, the 5-year-old (on the left) and Patrick, Rosie’s daddy, the 7.5-year-old. 

Both are of the Soft-Coated Wheaten Terrier persuasion. We acquired Rosie first when she was a wee puppy of eight weeks. Patrick joined our household nine months later when it became abundantly clear that the combined energies of Joan and I were inadequate to keep up with the get-up-and-go of one curious canine cyclone.

But then, for every dash of dynamic dervish doggie behavior we experienced with Rosie, we got almost exactly the opposite with Patrick. You see, Patrick lived most of his adult life as the primary breeding male for a Soft-Coated Wheaten breeder in Kansas. 

Yes. In other words, Patrick was a stud.

In keeping with his lofty calling, Patrick came to us as a well-trained, well-mannered, dignified kind of guy. He had none of Rosie’s cute quirks and mannerisms. For example, Patrick didn’t counter surf. He didn’t beg for food. He stayed off the furniture. He came when he was called. He did not have Rosie’s irrational fear of garbage trucks, school busses, and umbrellas. He ALWAYS ate his food when it was served.

Patrick was the perfect gentleman stud dog.

“Hey!” Joan and I said to each other when Patrick first came to live with us, “Maybe Rosie will observe Patrick and start to emulate his mannerliness. Maybe Patrick’s good behavior will start to rub off on her and she will calm down a bit! Wouldn’t that be great!”

Yes, it would have been. Instead, it seems just the opposite has happened. Rosie’s quirks, anxieties, and misbehaviors seem to be rubbing off on Patrick instead of the other way around. Patrick now counter surfs. Patrick now begs for scraps from the dinner table. Patrick now seems to have developed a fear of garbage trucks, school busses, and umbrellas.

**SIGH**

Have you ever noticed… the same thing can happen with people? Parents notice (and lament) about the apparent strength of negative influences in their children’s lives in contrast to the positive ones. “Why does she have to hang out with THOSE kids? Why couldn’t she pick a different crowd to hang out with?”

Adults – even as old and set in our ways as some of us are – are also not immune from this kind of “infection.” We can also influence and be influenced by the water we swim in every day.

We choose the news sources we pay attention to. We choose the people we associate with. We choose the tone and direction of the conversations we participate in. Ultimately, we each choose the mental and spiritual zeitgeist we will live in on a given day.

As we pause and take stock of our environments, we are sometimes tempted to say, “The world is such a horrible place!” 

THAT is a true statement. 

“The world is a place of beauty, awe, and wonder,” is a statement that is just as true. 

Choosing to live our lives by the second statement doesn’t necessarily blind a person to the first. But I fear that if we choose to live by the truth of that first statement, we might well be destroying our ability to ever see or appreciate the truth of the second.

The Apostle Paul, in trying to explain the relationship of sin, the Law, and grace to the members of the early Roman church summed it up like this: “… but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more…” (Romans 5:20b, NRSVU). 

Sin, death, and despair executed Jesus of Nazareth on the cross. That part of the story is absolutely true. But the greater, surpassing truth is that grace rolled away the stone and burst the bonds of death, once and forever.

So, I guess the question left for each of us to ponder today is: What is the truth that is infecting you today? And who (or what) are you, in turn, infecting?

Abundant blessings;