Last night as I crept to bed, I stopped beside Doogie as he lay sleeping in his little doggie bed. I knelt down next to him and started petting him; he woke from his sleep, looked up at me with weary eyes, and with all the effort he could muster, gently pawed my arm, silently begging for me to lie down with him. So I lay down next to him and he leaned against me and closed his eyes.

Doogie does a lot of bad stuff, but it isn't anything extreme. It's the usual stuff you expect from any household dog. Emptying trash cans, leaving footprints over the carpet, clawing at the doors, sleeping on my bed when I ask him not to. But in all of it, not once do I stop loving him. Even when I yell at him and boot him outside my love for him never fluctuates. If I'm punishing him, I don't stop loving him, and sure enough an hour or two later, I'll let him back inside and he'll be happy again. Not once, in all the bad stuff he does, does the thought ever cross my mind, that thought being getting rid of him. No matter all the bad stuff he does, I won't ever stop loving him and I won't ever consider getting rid of him. He's mine, and nothing he does is going to change that.

I think it's the same way with us and God. He loves us unconditionally; it isn't based on what we do right or what we do wrong. He doesn't love us more when we're doing good than when we're doing bad. And even when we screw up and get locked in bad habits and sinful situations, he isn't going to abandon us, and the thought never crosses his mind: he won't ever abandon us, won't ever get rid of us. We're his, and nothing we do can change that.