Wendell Hawley’s book of prayers, ones he first prayed at College Church during his time of pastoral ministry here, are in the process of being printed into a new edition. I think it’s going to be beautiful, something many of us will want for our bookshelves and our hearts.

It’s not ready yet, but the publisher I’ve been working with on behalf of Wendell has sent the author’s proof, and I’ve been reading his prayers again. We used to use the prayers in our musings, but Wendell at some point told us to stop. He wanted to encourage Lorraine and me to write more of our own musings. He wanted to see what we would say week after week. So, we have respected his wishes. Until now.

Wendell, it’s just a few lines. This small portion of the first prayer in the section for October jumped out at me:

“Sovereign Lord, your greatness is unsearchable.
                Your goodness is infinite.
                Your compassion unfailing.
                Your mercies ever new.”

I walk my dog in the morning and consider the unsearchable greatness of the one Sovereign Lord. As my little min pin dodges through the grass to the tree trunks in the parkway and what bushes he can reach, I find myself thinking of greatness, goodness, compassion, mercies.

Unsearchable greatness, yes, but not unknowable. There are ways that we can know God. And we are invited to search the Scriptures and, in that sense, we do know him through a kind of searching. Never completely to know, but always a little bit more, day by day, to know him whom we cannot see, the One whose greatness we cannot search.

My dog cannot be outside unleashed. It’s his breed, impossible to catch if he gets loose without his leash. I want to be as tethered to God and his infinite greatness as my dog must be to his leash.

As I watch my dog sniffing, the walk turns into a run to whatever happens to be in front of us, to whatever smells good. The dog is intent on finding this goodness in the moment. And though I may be oblivious, he is attuned to all kinds of good things I can’t smell or hear.

What to make of infinite goodness? We might strive for a few acts of true goodness. Maybe try to do something good every day. Yes, let us all try for something good on this day. But our goodness, or maybe I’ll just speak for myself and say, my goodness is definitely finite. Short-lived goodness. That’s my kind. It is at its best when it knows that it really isn’t mine at all, but an echo or a shadow of the only good and wise One.

My dog has a different idea of goodness from Lorraine or me.

When we had two dogs and we were out of the house, they managed to break open a down-filled pillow. It was a good time, no, a great time for them, emptying out the pillow onto the bedroom floor—a foot of snow feathers blanketing a winter storm throughout our bedroom and floating down, down, down the stairs so that when we got home we saw the hint of it in the little down feather suspended in the air like the first snowflakes of the season.

Dog goodness and human goodness might occasionally align, but this was not one of those moments. My goodness so often falls under the category of down feathers let loose from their pillow-home. We come home and find the mess of goodness and clean it up as quickly as possible. By the time we’re done, the dogs have forgotten the feathers and moved on to a master-given chew toy. God’s goodness is not my goodness. His goodness follows us all the days of our lives, and cleanses us, not the other way around.

If goodness is in short supply, it seems like compassion, not to mention “unfailing compassion,” is even more of a rarity.

And the mercy of Jesus, wait, Wendell is saying mercies. Plural. These are ever new, not because they need to be but because every day of my whack-a-mole world requires a new mercy. Or two. Make that three or more.

My little dog breed was created to catch mice on farms in Germany, but here in Winfield, we don’t want him bringing us mice. We don’t want mice dead or alive dangling down the side of his mouth. Thankfully he hasn’t been doing that.

But here we are on our walk in the almost sun-up shadows of early morning.

I think of the dog of a former work colleague of Lorraine’s, who once proudly presented her with the pet parakeet bird in its mouth. Fortunately (for the dog), they loved the dog more than the bird.

Like a stubborn bloodhound kind of dog, I keep digging up folly. Every day I find some new folly particular to the day. I smell it, digging and picking it up with my mouth. I look up at my master. Look what I dug up now. Mercifully, he takes the dirt-covered moldy thing I’m so proud of finding. I release my jaws to his pull and there, it’s gone by God’s new and perfect mercy. We walk together.

Grateful for the leash.

Wendell goes on: “You are altogether lovely—superior in all things.”

This is not the apex of the prayer. It’s just there in the middle, not a complete thought even in itself and yet just these few lines stay with me. Like this pre-dawn ordinary walk on this October early day, I think and don’t think. My dear little dog is faithful in ways that I’m not. He is always happy for me to come home. He is always ready for a walk, always happy to just be in the same room with me. So, there are some ways that I can learn from him, to always be ready and happy to see and love my Lord.

As the sun comes up and the morning grey gives way to colors, I say along with Wendell, “Lord, you truly are altogether lovely.”