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Frodo, the Prodigal Dachshund

A real-life parable

-by Frank Smith

It was a January evening and my wife, Judy, and I were reveling in the eighteen inches of snow. We decided to have some friends over.

While she was getting things ready, I headed out the door with Frodo, our dachshund, for a quick walk. Rounding the corner for home, suddenly Frodo went on Full Dog Alert.

We lived next door to a seafood market, and Frodo and I both knew what lived beneath the building—a pack of wild, inbred one-eyed cats. Tonight, Frodo saw one and started to go for it. I said, "C'mon, buddy," and pulled firmly on his leash.

Snap! Off came the collar and Frodo disappeared down a hole under the market in a cacophony of hissing, spitting, yelping, and growling.

No amount of calling down that hole raised Frodo from the abyss. I could hear only a faint I from deep in the bowels of the earth.

I knew I didn't want to go after Frodo. But he was my dog, and we loved him. So I fumbled around in the dark, through the brush and the snow, until I found an unlocked cellar door. Grabbing my flashlight, I started down the stairs.

Before I reached the bottom, I realized this was going to be extremely unpleasant. The ceiling of the cellar was only four feet high and the floor was rock, mud, and debris under a foot-and-a-half of water. I half-stumbled, half-crouched on my hands and knees, over rocks and through icy muck.

World of the lost
As I lumbered along, my flashlight revealed an eerie world of giant albino spiders, discarded Mountain Dew bottles, and the frightening one-eyed cats. Then, back against a wall, two brown eyes reflected the flashlight's beam. I heard a whine. Frodo!

Did he immediately rush to my side? Nope. Frodo knew what he had done was verboten. He fidgeted. His eyes darted nervously around. He tried to get away.

I inched across a deep pool of water, up to my elbows and knees in cold water, holding the flashlight in my mouth. When I finally laid hands on my little dachshund, both of us covered with muck and smelling like litterboxes, I busted out laughing.

Frodo started wagging his tail and licking my face. We were a sight to behold, but, Judy warned us, not until we had cleaned up. As I held Frodo in the shower, mud and gunk running off us both, Ephesians 2:1-7 came to mind: "God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive together with Christ … even when we were lost through our rebellion. He raised us up with him, that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us."

Frodo's disobedience and fear, his flight at all costs—even if it meant being lost-mirrored my own rebellion against God. Yet the cold, the dark, the feelings of being trapped that I had just experienced with Frodo … what must it have been like for Jesus? To leave the holy fellowship he had known with the Father and Spirit from before eternity?

When I crawled through the water I was being careful to avoid glass and nails. After all, I didn't want to pierce my hands …

Copyright © 1997 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian magazine (formerly Christian Reader).
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