I am amazed at how much my son loves animals. Although my daughter treats them well, she doesn't seem to have that innate ability to care for them that my son has. He seeks them out, they seek him out. He looks for ways to be helpful to him, they find ways to help him. This mutual back and forth can on some days be quite annoying - for example he will try to feed them at the dinner table and our dog will in return later let him stand on her so he climb on something high!
We used to have a bunny who would hide when children came into our house and not come out until the last child's voice had been missing for some time. She had lived with children before and carried a few scares with her.
In today's culture it is not surprising to see a number of animals in people's homes as pets. We keep them for various reasons, but ultimately we took a oath - spoken or unspoken to care for them. To bring them in.
In Psalm 8 we here these words: You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all the things under their feet.
Powerful stuff. We are the top of the totem pole of the earth dwellers. But as Aunt May says to Spider Man - with great power comes great responsibility. And gosh do we have a lot of responsibility to the Earth - that God created.
Just as God created our bodies and as holy temples to God we should treat ourselves with such respect; our Earth was created by God's hands and we are called to respect that and all the living creatures.
As we try to teach our children about recycling and composting, my daughter asks me "why?" and I explain that we are trying to keep Earth beautiful. She looks around (our country home) and says things like "oh it is fabulous!" And it is fabulous. But in having dominion over it we don't have the right to disrespect it.
We would all be angry with someone who beat an animal. This winter a frightened indoor cat was dropped off and left at our barn, yup! And I am still angry with the person who did that, partly because they then made it my problem and of course I couldn't let it die. Yet we do not get that same angry feeling when people cut down the last trees in a forest or poor pollution in our rivers or throw McDonalds garbage outside the car while driving down the road.
We are the care takers. Even though my daughter doesn't have the same love for the animals that is apparent in my son, we have still taught her to be nice to them and to treat them well. She may grow up to never be an animal owner, but she won't grow up abusing them. We can all learn how to take care of this great earth, even if we don't care as much as some about the environment, we can learn to respect its future. If not for ourselves then for the generations who will have to inherit our mess.
