Grant was 5 years old. He wanted a puppy for a long time. He asked his daddy and his daddy always said the same thing, “Not now. Dogs are a lot of responsibility.” It’s not that Carl didn’t want his boy to have a dog – it was just a counting the cost thing.

Grant continued to ask. His dad continued to say no. One night when Grant and I were saying prayers before bed, he asked me, “Why can’t I have a puppy? Why does Daddy say no?”

I really didn’t answer his questions, I just said, “Grant, why don’t you pray about it? God is your heavenly Father. He knows what you need. He guides our family through your daddy. Why don’t you pray that if God wants you to have a dog, He’ll change your daddy’s mind. But remember – God may agree with your dad. And you’ll have to accept His answer.”

Grant was satisfied and right then began to pray, “Dear God, please change Daddy’s mind. Please make him let me have a dog. Amen”

Grant prayed that night after night. From August through the fall. I don’t think he missed a night and sometimes he prayed it other times too.

Sometime in the fall, my friend told me about a stray female dog that started hanging around her house. I wasn’t interested – Grant wanted a puppy and Carl was still saying no. Out of the question. She told me how gentle this dog was and how she had tried to find the owner but couldn’t. Wouldn’t I like to see her?

Not really. Why should I begin to love a dog that I know wouldn’t work for our family?

Harvest Festival rolled around – at the my friend’s home. This dog was on the property and for some reason at the bonfire that night, she sat on my feet. A beautiful brittany spaniel. My friend was quick to tell me how wonderful this dog would be for Grant and the whole Broggi family. Tell Carl.

Time passed and the children and I would go to my friend’s home  – to see our friends, not the dog.

By Christmas, somehow I had talked Carl into getting this dog for Grant for Christmas. “But she’s not even a puppy,” Carl said. I knew that but somehow we both knew she was our dog.

Grant named her Speckles because of the rust colored spots against her white fur. The vet said she was 2 years old and when we took her to have her spayed, we were surprised to find it had already been done.
Grant loved her. She was gentle and kind. She ran with everybody in the family. She hated coming in the house – always felt embarrassed – but we brought her in when the temperature was freezing. She was afraid of a broom – every time I swept the porch, she cowered. I would say, “Speckles, I’m not going to hit you with the broom.”

She loved Patch, our cat. They huddled and cuddled together. She loved our porch and deck. She loved to go for walks with us. She loved us.

She was so gentle that I wondered if she was a good watch dog. One day, after Jameson was born, I went for a walk with him in the stroller. We passed a house in the neighborhood and a huge chocolate lab ran out wagging his tail and wanting to lick Jameson’s face. Speckles jumped in the way and chased that dog off as if to say, “That’s my baby – don’t you dare touch him.”

I knew then she was loyal to us and would protect our children.

She liked to dig holes – that was the only thing for which I had to gently spank her. We have such a large yard, nearly 3 acres, so eventually she learned to dig the holes where I wouldn’t see them. In the summertime, she would dig out a shallow hole under shade trees to keep herself cool.

She loved our neighbors – the people across the street would feed her sometimes. And sometimes I would find big bowls that weren’t mine in my yard. I always wondered where they came from. One day when I was getting back from a run, I saw Speckles with a huge bowl in her mouth crossing the street from the neighbor’s yard. The little thief. Mr. and Mrs. Neighbor, though, loved her visits. They told me so. I asked them what kind of dog food they bought because obviously Speckles loved theirs better than ours.

She had a sad face. I always wondered about that. I didn’t know if her face reflected a melancholy “dogality” or if that’s just the way she was. Sometimes she seemed to smile but the more she aged, the more sad she seemed, especially if we were gone for any length of time.

One day, in Grant’s senior year of high school, he was working on a term paper at our kitchen table. All of a sudden I saw him get out of his chair and run out the back door, down the slope of our back yard, to his beloved dog who was struggling to get up the hill.

We knew she was old and frail, but she had the heart and muscles of a young dog – the vet always said so and was amazed. My mind flashed to all the years Grant played with her on that same slope. Speckles’ eyes flashing with delight, tail wagging uncontrollably, and Grant tumbling down the hill with her on his heels. But not today. When he reached his dog, it was like her back legs were paralyzed. Carl thought maybe she was having kidney failure or some kind of bone problem after talking with the vet.

But as Carl and Grant cleaned her back legs and hip, they could clearly see that someone had shot her. A bullet hole through the top of her spine.

Who would have shot such a gentle dog? We knew of a man who always threatened to shoot dogs - he lived nearby but we didn’t want to think he did it. He seemed friendly enough to us but you never know about people and there was certainly no mistake that Speckles had been shot.

We took good care of her, did everything the vet told us, kept her wound clean and finally after about a week, she was walking. She had lost a little weight but her appetite was good and she was doing so well.

One night about two weeks later, Jameson and I drove home from town. It was dusk and as we approached our driveway, we saw Speckles between the tree line and the road. She was looking for us as she often did whenever we were out past dark. She always wagged her tail and greeted us – sometimes even crying with excitement. I pulled into the driveway just a little and told Jameson to get out and bring her up to the porch. She was still recovering and I didn’t want her to struggle to get to the house. He did and we stroked her fur and said all the things a good owner says to a beloved dog. Good girl. Good girl. You’re so sweet. Good girl.

She wagged her tail, licked our hands, and seemed to be smiling. Really big.

We never saw her again. When morning came, Jameson went out to feed her but Speckles was gone. Nowhere to be found or seen. We searched every nook and cranny of our yard and neighborhood. We called and called. Knocked on neighbors’ doors.

Nothing. We called the animal shelter. We even watched to see if buzzards would begin circling somewhere – but it was like she had vanished off the face of the earth.

We cried. And we wondered if whoever shot her the first time shot her again. We couldn’t help but wonder. This dog never left us – and I know what people say. Some say when dogs get old and sense death is near, they wander off to die. Maybe. But Speckles was too loyal; it’s hard for us to believe she would have left without a goodbye. We had her for 12 years. She was loyal, faithful and I couldn't believe she was gone.

Back in 2004, I was saying goodbye to so many things in my life. Jeremy and Jordan, my big boys, were leaving home for good. Jeremy was heading to the Washington,DC, Jordan was getting married and moving to Oklahoma. GraceAnna was graduating from high school and leaving for college.

It was the year of big transitions for me because yes, I’m the kind of mom that likes home and family and children and our dog and noise. I not only love my children because they’re mine, I really like them. I liked them as babies and toddlers. I liked them as children – even through the “awkward, dumb joke” phases. I especially liked them as teens and then as the older ones were becoming adults, I realized I had these great people who were funny and fun, yet serious about all the right things. And they were my children.
I was thinking about these transitions and it hit me that this was our last Christmas as a family of seven. The adult years that always seemed so far away had come for some of my children.

One of the things I wanted to do before the children left after the holidays was to get final portraits of the two oldest – to hang in our living room as a contrast to their 1-year-old portraits. I often look at those baby faces and remember those days. All the children were basically bald – even at a year old, except for Jameson. He had a head full. Carl is quick to say that Jameson must have been two years old for his portrait. I am quick to say, “Absolutely not – I know.” Mothers do know and remember those kinds of things.

Since we were bringing the photographer out to our home, it was also the time to get a family portrait. That would be quite the appointment – with 7 people. Especially Broggi people.

I had few rules:

No T-shirts.
No jeans.
Wear what you are comfortable in and what you don’t mind seeing hanging in our living room for years to come.

Though I had asked the photographer to come to our home – she mentioned going to the beach - but we didn’t live on the beach. We lived in Seabrook. We lived on the marsh. And I wanted the pictures taken in the backyard – where I had watched my children and Speckles playing for so many years – the live oak that hangs over the marsh was the perfect backdrop for the family photo.

It was a balmy January day. Not unusual for coastal South Carolina. The gnats were out in full force as the photographer snapped away. So many pictures of the Broggis – but something or someone seemed to be missing. Grant said, “Let’s get Speckles.” We called her – she obeyed in her painfully shy way. She sat very proud, almost majestic, like she was guarding the Broggi family.

The picture was taken and now I look at that portrait as it hangs in our living room. I remember a little boy’s prayer, “Dear God, please change Daddy’s mind. Please make him let me have a dog. Amen”

God did. He changed Carl’s mind. He made him let Grant have a dog. God knew we needed that dog. She was our Speckles and we loved her so.

Sometimes even now, I look for her sad eyes when I turn into our driveway. What happened to her? It makes me think of all the questions I used to wonder about animals when I was a girl. Will my puppy go to heaven? How ‘bout my kittens? And what about the bird I rescued? What happens to animals when they die?”

Most children wonder those things. God provided animals for us to rule over but also to enjoy. He says a lot about them in His word.

He speaks of them right away in creation when He made them. It was on day 5 that God made the great sea monsters and the all the aquatic creatures. It was on day 5 that He made the feathered, winged birds.

But it was on day 6 that He made all the land animals – including those that we call our pets. These were made on the same day He made people.

Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind”; and it was so. God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good.

Making those animals was a good thing for us. God continues in verse 24, Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

It’s like they have a special place in creation – oh, they are not people; they do not have souls. God did not breathe the breath of life into them the way He did with us. But God and even the passage of time has shown us that animals help us perform work and duty for the Lord like the ravens who fed the prophet, like the donkey that carried Mary when she was great with child, and like the one that carried Jesus into Jerusalem. They not only work for us, though, they somehow help us through life.

They teach us a lot about this journey –

Speckles . . . so much more a part of our family. And now all these years later, we've said goodbye to a beloved dog. She taught my children a lot – especially Grant. But she taught me too. I saw so much in her sad eyes, I heard a lot listening to her happy cry whenever we came home, and I felt a lot of pain when she left us. And Grant knew then, as he does now, that God does hear and answer prayers of even a 5-year-old boy.

Speckles . . . hmmm. She now sits forever in our family portrait that hangs in our home, figuratively, yet faithfully guarding the Broggi family.

Audrey Broggi

Speckles

THE BIBLE'S WORD ON IT

WINE-DRINKING IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES

ROBERT H. STEIN 

As evangelicals we maintain that the Bible is for us the only infallible rule of faith and practice. It is our final authority in all matters of doctrine (faith) and ethics (practice). Yet the Bible was not written to evangelicals living in the twentieth century. The science—or better, the art—of interpreting the biblical text so that the revelation of God written centuries ago is meaningful and correctly understood today is called “hermeneutics.” The basic principle of hermeneutics, to be somewhat simplistic, is that the question “What does it mean for us today?” must be preceded by the question “What did it mean for them yesterday?” If we do not seek first to understand what the text meant when it was written, it will be very difficult to interpret intelligently what it means and demands of us today. 

My subject here is the use of the term “wine” in the New Testament. Some readers may already be thinking, “Is he going to try to tell us that wine in the Bible means grape juice? Is he going to try to say that the wine mentioned in the New Testament is any different from the wine bottled today by Christian Brothers or Château Lafite-Rothschild or Mogen David?” Well, my answers are no and yes. No, the wine of the Bible was not unfermented grape juice. Yes, it was different from the wine of today. 

In ancient times wine was usually stored in large pointed jugs called amphorae. When wine was to be used it was poured from the amphorae into large bowls called kraters, where it was mixed with water. Last year 1 had the privilege of visiting the great archaeological museum in Athens, Greece, where I saw dozens of these large kraters. At the time it did not dawn on me what their use signified about the drinking of wine in biblical times. From these kraters, cups or kylix were then filled. What is important for us to note is that before wine was drunk it was mixed with water. Thekylix were filled not from the amphorae but from the kraters. 

The ratio of water to wine varied. Homer (Odyssey IX, 208f.) mentions a ratio of 20 to 1, twenty parts water to one part wine. Pliny (Natural History XIV, vi, 54) mentions a ratio of eight parts water to one part wine. In one ancient work, Athenaeus’s The Learned Banquet, written around A.D. 200, we find in Book Ten a collection of statements from earlier writers about drinking practices. A quotation from a play by Aristophanes reads: “‘Here, drink this also, mingled three and two.’ Demus. ‘Zeus! But it’s sweet and bears the three parts well!’” The poet Euenos, who lived in the fifth century B.C., is also quoted: 

The best measure of wine is neither much nor very little;

For ‘tis the cause of either grief or madness.

It pleases the wine to be the fourth, mixed with three nymphs.

Here the ratio of water to wine is 3 to 1. Others mentioned are: 

Sometimes the ratio goes down to 1 to 1 (and even lower), but it should be noted that such a mixture is referred to as “strong wine.” Drinking wine unmixed, on the other hand, was looked upon as a “Scythian” or barbarian custom. Athenaeus in this work quotes Mnesitheus of Athens: 

The gods has revealed wine to mortals, to be the greatest blessing for those who use it aright, but for those who use it without measure, the reverse. For it gives food to them that take it and strength in mind and body. In medicine it is most beneficial; it can be mixed with liquid and drugs and it brings aid to the wounded. In daily intercourse, to those who mix and drink it moderately, it gives good cheer; but if you overstep the bounds, it brings violence. Mix it half and half, and you get madness; unmixed, bodily collapse. 

It is evident that wine was seen in ancient times as a medicine (and as a solvent for medicines) and of course as a beverage. Yet as a beverage it was always thought of as a mixed drink. Plutarch(Symposiacs III, ix), for instance, states. “We call a mixture ‘wine,’ although the larger of the component parts is water.” The ratio of water might vary, but only barbarians drank it unmixed, and a mixture of wine and water of equal parts was seen as “strong drink” and frowned upon. The term “wine” or oinos in the ancient world, then, did not mean wine as we understand it today but wine mixed with water. Usually a writer simply referred to the mixture of water and wine as “wine.” To indicate that the beverage was not a mixture of water and wine he would say “unmixed(akratesteron) wine.” 

One might wonder whether the custom of mixing wine with water was limited to the ancient Greeks. The burden of proof would be upon anyone who argued that the pattern of drinking wine in Jewish society was substantially different from that of the examples already ‘given. And we do have examples in both Jewish and Christian literature and perhaps in the Bible that wine was likewise understood as being a mixture of wine and water. In several instances in the Old Testament a distinction is made between “wine” and “strong drink.” In Leviticus 10:8, 9, we read, “And theLORD spoke to Aaron, saying, ‘Drink no wine nor strong drink, you nor your sons with you, when you go into the tent of meeting. . . .‘“ Concerning the Nazarite vow Numbers 6:3 states that the Nazarite “shall separate himself from wine and strong drink.” This distinction is found also in Deuteronomy 14:26; 29:6; Judges 13:4, 7, 14; First Samuel 1:15: Proverbs 20:1; 31:4,6: Isaiah5:11, 22; 28:7; 29:9; 56:12; and Micah 2:11. 

The 1901 Jewish Encyclopedia (Vol. 12, p. 533) states that in the rabbinic period at least “‘yayin’ [or wine] ‘is to be distinguished from ‘shekar’ [or strong drink]: the former is diluted with water (mazug’); the latter is undiluted (‘yayin hal’).” ln the Talmud, which contains the oral traditions of Judaism from about 200 B.C. to A.D. 200, there are several tractates in which the mixture of water and wine is discussed. One tractate (Shabbath 77a) states that wine that does not carry three parts of water well is not wine. The normal mixture is said to consist of two parts water to one part wine. In a most important reference (Pesahim 108b) it is stated that the four cups every Jew was to drink during the Passover ritual were to be mixed in a ratio of three parts water to one part wine. From this we can conclude with a fair degree of certainty that the fruit of the vine used at the institution of the Lord’s Supper was a mixture of three parts water to one part wine. In another Jewish reference from around 60 B.C. we read, “It is harmful to drink wine alone, or again, to drink water alone, while wine mixed with water is sweet and delicious and enhances one’s enjoyment” (II Maccabees 15:39). 

In ancient times there were not many beverages that were safe to drink. The danger of drinking water alone raises another point. There were several ways in which the ancients could make water safe to drink. One method was boiling, but this was tedious and costly. Different methods of filtration were tried. The safest and easiest method of making the water safe to drink, however, was to mix it with wine. The drinking of wine (i.e., a mixture of water and wine) served therefore as a safety measure, since often the water available was not safe. (I remember drinking some water in Salonica, Greece, that would have been much better for me had it been mixed with wine or some other purifying agent.) 

When we come to the New Testament the content of the wine is never discussed. The burden of proof, however, is surely upon anyone who would say that the “wine” of the New Testament is substantially different from the wine mentioned by the Greeks, the Jews during the intertestamental period, and the early church fathers. In the writings of the early church fathers it is clear that “wine” means wine mixed with water. Justin Martyr around A.D. 150 described the Lord’s Supper in this way: “Bread is brought, and wine and water, and the president sends up prayers and thanksgiving”(Apology 1, 67, 5). Some sixty-five years later Hippolytus instructed the bishops that they shall “eucharistize [bless] first the bread into the representation of the Flesh of Christ; and the cup mixed with wine for the antitype of the Blood which was shed for all who have believed in Him”(Apostolic Tradition XXIII, 1). Cyprian around A.D. 250 stated in his refutation of certain heretical practices: 

Nothing must be done by us but what the Lord first did on our behalf, as that the cup which is offered in remembrance of Him should be offered mingled with wine. . . . 

Thus, therefore, in considering the cup of the Lord, water alone cannot be offered, even as wine alone cannot be offered. For if anyone offer wine only, the blood of Christ is dissociated from us: but if the water be alone, the people are dissociated from Christ. . . . Thus the cup of the Lord is not indeed water alone, nor wine alone, unless each be mingled with the other [Epistle LXII, 2, 11 and 13]. 

Unmixed wine and plain water at the Lord’s Supper were both found unacceptable. A mixture of wine and water was the norm. Earlier in the latter part of the second century Clement of Alexandria stated: 

It is best for the wine to be mixed with as much water as possible. . . . For both are works of God, and the mixing of the two, both of water and wine produces health, because life is composed of a necessary element and a useful element. To the necessary element, the water, which is in the greatest quantity, there is to be mixed in some of the useful element [Instructor II, ii, 23.3—24.1].

To consume the amount of alcohol that is in two martinis by drinking wine containing three parts water to one part wine, one would have to drink over twenty-two glasses. In other words, it is possible to become intoxicated from wine mixed with three parts of water, but one’s drinking would probably affect the bladder long before it affected the mind. 

In concluding this brief article I would like to emphasize two points. First, it is important to try to understand the biblical text in the context in which it was written. Before we ask “What does the biblical text mean for us today?” we must ask “What did it mean to them originally?” Second, there is a striking difference between the drinking of alcoholic beverages today and the drinking of wine in New Testament times. If the drinking of unmixed wine or even wine mixed in a ratio of one to one with water was frowned upon in ancient times, certainly the drinking of distilled spirits in which the alcoholic content is frequently three to ten times greater would be frowned upon a great deal more.  

Robert H. Stein is associate professor of New Testament at Bethel College, St. Paul, Minnesota. He has the B.D. from Fuller Seminary, S.T.M. from Andover Newton Theological School, and Ph.D. from Princeton Seminary.