I remember the day we got her.  I was 10.  We took a trip to the Michigan Humane Society, all in high hopes of finding an addition to our family.  She was part of an unwanted litter.  She was small, black, and playful.  I remember how she came to the front of the cage to greet us; how she looked us in the eyes.

I remember the day we brought her home.  After days of deliberation, we had decided to call her Scout, after the main character of To Kill a Mockingbird.  She started out as an "outside" dog, but none of us had the heart to leave her out there all night.  So she became a "back room only" dog, but the way she stood at the gate, staring at us, made it tough for us to not let her in.  She became a part of our family.

I remember the day we left her outside while we took a quick trip to the store, and it started to storm.  We came home to find the fence forced open, and Scout was nowhere to be found.  We were all devastated by the thought of losing her.  Only a short time later, we got a call from the person who had found her.  We were all so happy to see her, and she was so happy to be home.  She never ran away again.

I remember the way she always found her way into our home movies, whether we wanted her to or not.

I remember how she would start running around the house at top speed at 10pm every night, right on cue.

I remember the way you would rub her stomach and yell, "Piranah!" and she would turn on her back and snap at the air.

I remember how she started to turn gray as she got older.  I remember how she started to struggle to stand up and walk up stairs.  I remember how she would start choking out of nowhere, sometimes vomiting in order to breathe.

Most of all, I remember just how much love I had for this little puppy that we brought home one day, and how she stuck around to watch all of us grow up.

My dad called me today to tell me that Scout had passed away.  He found her on the back patio, lying next to the door of the house she had won her way into as a pup; the house of the family that loved her as much as she loved us.

I'm going to miss her a lot.

God gave us a great gift; the concept of fairness.  And we grossly misuse it.

Fairness is something we begin to recognize at a very young age.  We can tell when we've been given the smaller slice of cake or a shorter amount of time playing with a toy.  We instantly recognize that it's "not fair!" when we are given something we perceive to be inferior to what someone else has gotten.

And this sense of fairness only grows as we get older. 

So is that why God gave us this ability?  To be able to make sure we get our "fair" share?  That's certainly what we've turned it into.

I thing God gave us this ability so we can recognize when things are unfair for others.

And the truth is, things are so unfair for so many people.

There are more than 27 million people currently enslaved.  27 MILLION! 

80% of those are women and children.

Roughly 84% of countries in the world are involved in some sort of human trafficking, including the US.

25,000 children die each day due to poverty and the inability to meet their basic needs.

More than 1.1 billion people don't even have access to clean water.

More than 80% of the world lives on less than $10 a day.

And we still think it's unfair if we make less than $10 an hour.  Then we turn around, spend that on useless crap, including a $2 bottle of water (ignoring the fact that we can turn on the faucet and drink perfectly good water for about 15 cents).  We go out and drop our paychecks on things we could easily live without, oblivious to the fact that our excessive spending is actually enabling this modern day slavery.  Then we call up our friends to go out for $5 cups of coffee so we can sit around and talk about how unfair life is for us.


Sound fair?

I'm always fascinated by the beauty of fall. It's one of the few weather-related things I would miss if I were to ever leave the Midwest. I love the change of color, the crispy crunching of leaves, the cool breeze.

What I love most is the picture it paints of death and rebirth. I think that perfectly illustrates the cycles we have to go through in life.

There are times in our lives where we have to break away from a part of ourselves. Whether it's a sin that we've been holding onto, a relationship that isn't good for us, our spending habits... Whatever it might be, it's usually tough to just let it go. We don't want to just pluck it from our tree.

So we slowly start to sever ties. As we consciously try to avoid the sin, stop seeing a person as much, stop spending outrageously, the leaf begins to turn orange. The leaf still seems so appealing and is still a part of us, but we know if we don't get rid of it soon, it's just going to cause long-term damage.

So we sever more ties. We start finding ways to take our mind off the sin, we start spending time with different people, we start budgeting our money. And the leaf turns red. It still looks beautiful. It could probably be nurtured back to life.

But is it worth the long-term damage? Is it worth damaging the tree?

So we sever the final ties. We fill our time with constructive activities, we start building new relationships, we find wise ways to use our money. The leaf finishes it's life and falls from our tree.

Here's where the best part comes in: rebirth.

When we are able to break away from those things in our lives, it opens us up to new growth. We can begin to make a difference in others' lives. We can start to build close and fostering relationships. We can start using our resources to benefit others.

All things that couldn't happen if we just held on to those old leaves.

Isn't it beautiful?