Call me stupid; call me fat; call me ugly; insult my family … but don’t you dare say anything bad about my dog! The total truth?… I love my dog – who has an abundance of good character traits most folks will never attain.

I mention this as a backdrop to explain why a little car magnet I have seen a few times has caught my eye. In the shape of a paw print, it merely says: “Who rescued who?”

Of course, there is surely a story behind the owner of the car doing that – likely a story of a poor dog who needed adoption, and later paid that new owner back by providing in some critical season those traits of copious devotion this creature is known for possessing.

It is credited (apparently spuriously) to Harry Truman that he said, “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.”  From my foray into the political world, the only thing not believable about this statement is that a politician would have the insight to utter such a truism.

All of this is to say that the little 3-word phrase on the magnet is basically proclaiming that the way something appears to be true from what is visible is actually just the other way around.

I think this little phrase is illustrative of a major idea in the doctrine of salvation. We think we are saved because we found God, and this appears to be true. We were lost, someone told us about salvation in Christ, we considered it, and we made a conscious step of faith through prayer to accept him and his gift.

Not to get too deep into theological weeds, but I believe the Scriptures teach that truly God did all the rescuing … that He was the one really seeking us in the first place – calling us and opening our eyes and drawing us to Himself. Do not the Scriptures say:

– We love him because He first loved us.

– There are none who are righteous, there are none who seek after God.

– For it is by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.

So who rescued who?  Who saved who?

And on top of that, God spelled backwards is “DOG” (Chris Wiles pointed this out to me! And that’s why we pay him a couple hundred thousand a year!).