Spiritual lessons from a special yellow lab
When David Wheaton started playing tennis professionally, he thought his dream of having a dog was dead.
Then came one morning,
Wheaton
“I was over in Tokyo, of all places, playing in another tennis tournament. I was in my late twenties, and I had wanted a dog for a couple years…but I couldn’t because I was on the road all the time and my parents told me, ‘No, no! We know the old trick about ‘you want the dog, but we’re going to take care of it when you’re gone. We don’t want to do that”
“I had kind of given up on the dream. So there I am over in Tokyo, and it was over Easter weekend. Over three days, on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I began [getting] a fax each day from home from my mother…the first fax was that she had seen this beautiful yellow lab in her neighborhood, and I thought ‘well that’s interesting, why would she even bring that up?’
“Well the next day she said, ‘I talked to the breeder of that yellow lab.’ And then on Easter Sunday she faxed me and said she had put a down payment on a puppy that hadn’t even been conceived yet. So I knew something was going on, thousands of miles away back home.
“Lo and behold, I came home and not too long thereafter we brought this adorable little yellow Labrador puppy into our home, named Ben.”
Many people know Wheaton for his tennis days, where he routinely won national and international tournaments. Now, he hosts The Christian Worldview, a nationally-syndicated radio show.
The story of David’s dog, Ben, however, is a special one — unique from his former tennis fame and current calling as a radio host.
He joined Dr. Bill Maier Live! to talk about his most recent book, and how his “right-hand man” and “dog-of-a-lifetime” taught him some profound things about his faith.
You can hear the entire interview at the top of this post, and listen to a highlight below:
