oil spill prayer journey: a shelter for pets
The night before Scott and I set out on the first full day of our prayer trip along the Gulf of Mexico, I happened to catch a couple of blog posts from Wayne Pacelle of the Humane Society and Stephanie Feldstein of Change.org about the Plaquemines and St. Bernard parish shelters of the Louisiana Gulf. Having not yet fully recovered from hurricane Katrina, they were already feeling the economic effects of the oil spill, and just beginning to experience a greater number of pet relinquishments as a result.
Scott and I had the privilege of visiting Plaquemines Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) at the end of that first day, a no-kill pet rescue and shelter in Belle Chasse, about 20 minutes southeast of New Orleans. While it's always hard to see healthy animals confined in cages or grouped in small rooms like at any shelter, it was abundantly apparent how much care and love was invested in these animals, and finding them homes. Knowing that the shelter made every effort to place them, under the guidance of their tireless director Jacob Stroman, was tremendously comforting. I've visited another shelter, with equally adoptable animals, and walked out with far less reassurance. As I mentioned to Scott, it's not an easy reality to process.
We got to tour the cat rooms and the small and large dog rooms, and even saw Jacob and some of the other shelter staff and volunteers in action: answering the ever-ringing phone, bottle-feeding a tiny kitten, cleaning floors, and generally displaying at every turn a selfless service on behalf of their animal charges and the humans they came in contact with. Just before the shelter closed for the day to the public, we even got to see one of the moments which makes the work so worthwhile for all of them, when a 5-year-old, great big dog was adopted by a kindhearted soul.
While they still had 90-plus animals to find homes for when we left, Jacob mentioned that they were bracing for even more relinquishments in the coming days and weeks as a result of the spill. As Scott wrote in his recap of the day, "This is certainly one of the effects of the spill that goes unnoticed: God’s creatures abandoned, stranded, and left in cages."
Please read the fuller posts linked above to find out more about the situation, and how the Humane Society has helped respond with food for local fishers. Please pray for Plaquemines Animal Welfare Society and St. Bernard Parish Animal Shelter, and all of the rescue and shelter efforts along the Gulf, and consider helping in some way yourself if you can. And please always remember the great needs of our local animal rescues and shelters, and the precious lives they serve. Please support them, and consider adopting an animal who desperately needs a home. Each of my own cats was adopted, and I can't tell you how much joy and grace each of them have brought to our lives.
I'd like to extend a huge thanks to Jacob and PAWS for allowing us to visit and observe that afternoon, and even taking the time to show us around despite an incredibly busy week made even busier by all the positive media attention. It really is incredibly devoted work they're doing, and I can't commend them highly enough for it. If interested, you can connect with PAWS on Facebook as well.
June 29, 2010
Reader Comments (5)
Good thing to have stumbled here. This blog is very inspiring. It always feels good to know about people who are willing to give our little friends a temporary home.
Julie
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If God cares about animals so much, why did he kill a whole bunch of them in a giant Flood? Why did Jesus send pigs to their deaths? Why does the Bible view goats as being worse than sheep? The Bible doesn't view dogs in a great light either, and doesn't even mention domestic cats.
Why did God make parasitic wasps that eat the host alive from the inside out? Why did he create predators that kill baby zebras? Or cuckoo birds that kick the host's chicks out of the nest? Why did God make dinosaurs, only to let them die via an asteroid? In fact, why have 99% of all species gone extinct?
Darin, thank you for dropping by. If you're interested in a genuine dialogue, I'd be happy to respond, but I'd ask if you could look over a bit more of our content first, such as our FAQ, as well as our comment policy. thanks - Ben (NOS admin)
Darin, you could just as easily ask, "If God really cares about people so much, why did He order the Israelites to wipe out entire nations (including children, in some cases)? Why did He create diseases that cause people to die painful deaths? Why does He allow wars and murders to happen?" The answer is that 1) all these tragedies are ultimately the results of our own sin and 2) God knows more about the whole situation than we do, and has a deeper purpose behind it all. I think that the suffering of animals may be one of the things God uses to shake us out of our own complacency about sin. Whenever we look upon anyone's suffering, including that of an innocent animal, we see the ugly consequences of our deeds thrown back in our faces. It encourages us to long for a better world and suspect that this isn't how things are really supposed to be -- and those kinds of longings can lead a person to God. This is an important purpose because, as much as God cares about animals, He cares about people more. "The wages of sin is death," and, so that we don't forget this important concept, we see death displayed around us in myriad forms every day, in our sin-cursed world. Jesus offers the only means of escape, and the ugliness of our environment pushes us toward Him. Animals were offered as sacrifices in the Old Testament for similar reasons. It wasn't as if God needed the sacrifices; it was the people who needed them. They were a vivid object lesson to prepare the people for Christ's sacrifice on the cross, and to show them that sin has consequences. When the time came, with many years of animal sacrifices in their history, it was easier for them to understand just what Christ's death meant.
Another possible explanation rests with our responsibility for the animals. God wants us to have responsibility and dominion over His creation, but He also wants us to have free will; and we can't really have both free will and responsibility unless we have the option to shirk our responsibilities, to the detriment of those under our care. We, as a race, shirked the ultimate responsibility when our ancestors disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit, and now all of creation suffers for it.
In any case, whatever the explanations for human and animal pain may be, I think the Bible makes it clear that God cares about both people and animals. It is left to us to trust that there are explanations for the suffering that we see, and to do our part to minimize suffering wherever we are able.
And as far as the Bible's denoting particular animals "worse" than others goes, these are figurative pictures. Certain habits of animals (such as a goat's greater tendency to wander away from a shepherd) are used as illustrations; calling a wicked person a "goat" refers to his/her desire to wander from God's principles, and calling someone a "wolf" refers to his tendency to viciously attack other people, the way a wolf attacks its prey. These illustrations are vivid and help the concepts lodge in the reader's mind, but they don't necessarily indicate that the animals which furnish them are bad, since the behaviors referred to are simply the result of instinct. Remember that after God created the animals in Genesis 1, He pronounced all of them "good"; and, when His work was completed, He called the entire creation "very good," not excepting any of it. If there is anything "wrong" with the animals now, it comes from the corruption of sin, which is our fault, not theirs.
Jenny, I'm blown away by the theological richness and insight of your response to Darin. Truly well said, Ben