The Yellow Cur
By Julia Chastain
I finished a new book last night
that really got me thinking. In the story, the hero, John Guido, and the
heroine, Amaryllis, had loved each other since childhood, but John Guido had
been abroad studying music for many years. Now he was coming home when they
were both all grown up, and anticipation was at a height. Amaryllis learned
that her brother Peter was returning from college in England on the same boat
that John Guido and his father were on, and she encouraged Peter to become
friends with John Guido without telling him why, thinking to introduce him to
her family this way. Peter took to John Guido right away and invited him to go
on a boating trip the next week with him and his friends, kind of a vacation
before they jump back into work as it were. John Guido, never having been on a
yacht, was excited to accept, his only concern that he wouldn’t get to see
Amaryllis as soon, but his father urged him to go, thinking it would be good
for him to make friends outside of the music world. Then disaster—the engine
exploded, the boat went down off the coast of Maine, and everyone on board was
lost. As soon as Amaryllis saw the newspaper, she went at once to John’s
father, Mr. Forrester, awash with grief and guilt to tell him the terrible news.
She thought it was her fault that John Guido had died because she introduced
him to her brother causing him to be invited on the trip. Mr. Forrester said,
no, it was his fault because he urged John Guido to go when he wasn’t sure. As
they were comforting each other on their losses, they suddenly heard a familiar
whistle in the garden outside—it was John Guido walking up the walk! He knew
nothing about the accident, explaining that he had been on the boat, but
remembered he had a letter his father wanted him to mail and got off quickly to
mail it. Before he could return to the boat, he saw a stray dog injured when a
freight box fell on it on the docks, and he stopped to bandage it up. The boat
left without him, and though he was at first understandably upset, he
eventually decided it was for the best, as he really wanted to just get home
and see Amaryllis. So he brought the dog home with him, a “yellow cur” as he
called it, blaming it for his rotten luck. Of course, when he realized what
that yellow cur had saved him from, he didn’t think it was such bad luck after
all.
The
word “cur” is not a word you hear a lot these days (the book was written in the
early 1900s); it means “a mangy, scrawny mutt of indeterminate origin”—the
implication is something that is ugly, unsightly, and unwanted. Because the
attitude of these stray dogs is generally hostile, cowardly and sneaky around
humans, the word came to describe anyone who was hostile, cowardly, or sneaky.
It is not a complimentary word. And yet it was this very thing, something
seemingly insignificant and inconvenient at best that saved John Guido’s life.
It made me think of all those times you hear about someone having a flat tire
and thereby missing the fatal crash that happened up ahead, or forgetting something
and turning around to get it, missing the accident that would have killed them
if they had been in it. Or the classic—the man who was running late for work
the morning the Twin Towers fell. We tend to curse these delays and mishaps
because they ruin our plans for the day, and yet hindsight often provides a
different perspective, and we can see the hand of God protecting us and working
in our lives. Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that in all things God works for
the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose
(NIV).” This means that everything that happens in our lives, good or bad,
according to plan or horribly inconvenient, is a part of God’s plan, and He is
using it for our good to bring glory to His name. It’s easy to stress when
things don’t happen the way we think they should, but we need to instead take a
step back and try to see things from heaven’s perspective. We can’t always see
the big picture, but we can trust that God has a reason for setbacks and delays
and that in the right time His will, not ours, will be accomplished. And His
will for us is always good (Jer. 29:11). So the next time a yellow cur comes
into your life, don’t curse it or rail at the inconvenience; instead, thank God
that He is able to turn what seems to be bad into something good, and you just
might be amazed at what God can do.
