Mary said she’d seen him at the tomb, he waited by the stone.
The gardener said, “I fed him, ’cause he just won’t go home.”
Next day Mary saw the stone was rolled away and she said, “Oh!
Where have they taken him, and by the way, where’s Jericho?”

Where’s Jericho? Right now I’m on the road with Maya. I suppose you could say we’re an unlikely couple. I’m what you’d call a mutt, while Maya is a beautiful Saluki of noble lineage. But we have a story to tell. The story of my best friend, a man named Jesus.

Jesus healed my leg when he rescued me from a group of mean children who were taunting me and throwing rocks at me. When He petted me and I looked into Jesus’ eyes, the pain went away and I knew I’d found a friend forever.
All the anger I’d felt toward humans my whole life vanished, replaced by a kind of love I’d never known before. Unconditional love.

We’re in Greece now, and the dogs in Athens have a word for it, “agape,” (ah-gah-pay) There’s a song that says, “Sometimes love is love between a brother and a sister. Sometimes love is love between a woman and a man. But there’s a love, the kind of love that’s made in Heaven. Agape love. The kind of love that understands.”

That’s agape love. It’s unconditional love, and when I met Jesus, for the first time, I felt it!
I couldn’t wait to tell Ulysses, Petra, Maya, and my other friends (even that annoying lizard, Miguel,) about it. Maya feels the same way, so we’re off to tell the world!

You may have noticed that I just called my friend Miguel “that annoying lizard,” which doesn’t sound like a very nice thing to say about a friend, but it’s the truth. He can be, at times, well… annoying. That’s how he ended up in our little band. But we love him just the same, because he’s our friend. I suppose we’d all prefer him not to be so annoying, but that’s how he is, so we accept him as he is.

You probably know someone like Miguel, most people do. I hope you love them anyway, because that’s what unconditional love is all about. But that unconditional love doesn’t have to be just for your friends and family. It can, and should be for every creature God created. Even humans.

Love,
Jericho