Wednesday, October 23, 2019

O Lord, what a variety of things you have made! In wisdom you have made them all. The earth is full of your creatures.” (Psalm 104:24, New Living Translation) 

                All things bright and beautiful,
                All creatures great and small,
                All things wise and wonderful,
                The Lord God made them all. (C.F. Alexander)

                When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a veterinary. I even worked for a few weeks for the local vet in Belleville under an internship grant. It was fascinating. In just a couple of weeks I experienced many facets of veterinary medicine. And I have several quite memorable stories that came out of even such a short time.

Once we went to a farm to castrate some pigs.  Usually, this is done when they are quite small, just a few days old or so.  When we got to the farm, we discovered that we were dealing with much older porkers, each weighing maybe around a 100 pounds or more, making the task extremely difficult. Our solution, crude but effective, was to rope them around the back legs, throw the rope over a barn ceiling beam and hoist them up, leaving their back side exposed to do the deed.  There is nothing quite so ear-splitting as a squealing pig. And we had about a dozen we had to nip and tuck.

Susan and I have become addicted to several of the reality vet shows on TV: The Incredible Dr. Pol, Dr. Oakley the Yukon Vet and Dr. K’s Animal ER. I now know more about the insides of cows, pigs, horses, sheep, goats, dogs, cats, rabbits, even lizards and tortoises than you could imagine and you might not want to. Some of it is quite graphic. They don’t save every animal. Dr. Pol is a 76-year-old doctor in Michigan, but as strong as some of the big animals he tends to.  He’s old-school when it comes to practicing veterinary medicine and a lot of things he can tell simply by touch and feel and by just looking at something.

Our pets are very precious to us. It is amazing to go into a pet food store and see aisles full of various sorts of just dog food alone. One pet food company in the United States generated 18 billion dollars in sales in 2018. And we pet owners know that a vet bill can easily soar into the hundreds of dollars. Yet, generally speaking, we will go to such lengths if there is even a small chance we can save our pets. Non-pet owners may think we’re crazy in the way we pamper our pets.  There is hardly a client on the vet shows who doesn’t say something to the effect that their pet is like their  child or is part of the family or a best friend or some other sentimental notion. Even some of the farmers have some warmth for their cows.

Maybe we are just a little bit crazy.

Then God said, “Let the earth produce every sort of animal, each producing offspring of the same kind—livestock, small animals that scurry along the ground, and wild animals.” And that is what happened. God made all sorts of wild animals, livestock, and small animals, each able to produce offspring of the same kind. And God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1: 24 – 25)

God then made humanity to become good stewards of all  these  creatures, both domestic and wild, as well as the  birds of the air and fish of the sea. Creation is good and we should do a far better job of maintaining it and grooming it and providing for all of its welfare.  A farmer who doesn’t look after his cattle, keep them well-fed and cared for, tending to them if sick, keeping their shelter clean  and pest  free will eventually lose  his  or her very livelihood.

So too, all of us need to care about what is happening to our planet. We have slowly been killing our earthly home. If you don’t believe that climate change is real, you should. When God gave us dominion over this world and its creatures he didn’t mean for us to run it into the ground but to nurture and tend to its well-being. As one bumper sticker has it: There is no Plan(et) B.

He gave us eyes to see them,

And lips that we might tell,

How great is God Almighty,

Who has done all things well.

Dale