From the very beginning animals took center stage
In the earliest Scriptural references to the creation of the earth, God described, discussed and directed humans to consider His animals.
Imagine if anything else had taken such a prestigious position in Scripture. How important would anything have to be to hold such an important place in the heart and mind of God Himself?
In various places throughout the Bible, God explains where man appears in the ‘hierarchy’ of life. Similarly, He admonishes people to value their animals and even uses the numbers of animals a man might have to establish his position in society or to establish him as ‘wealthy’
He also admonishes owners to provide for their animals’ health and well-being.
One of the primary reasons provided as ‘justification’ for attacking Jesus was the incident in which He rescued a lamb from a ravine on a Sunday. Throughout Scripture, God uses animals to illustrate to people how they are to show compassion in this world and what is valuable to Him.
He knew and regularly acknowledged the significant relationship between humans and their pets — as companions — and reveals this relationship to be crucial in the lives of people who love their animals as they would a child.
How many people do you personally know whose purpose for living is ‘wrapped up’ in caring for their pet.
In childless relationships, in the lives of the elderly people living alone, in cases of persons suffering significant disability [the blind, the deaf, those suffering with PTSD, the Autistic, the behaviorally ‘disordered’, the aged] their animals provide them with a means of coping with an otherwise debilitating issue.
Indeed, for many, animals are the bridge between life and death because life without their animals would be unbearable.
It is for this reason that we see ‘therapy animals’ as the gift God provided to prevent people from feeling completely and utterly alone in this world — especially during periods of extreme loneliness or grief.
The grieving process, in and of itself, is incomprehensible for anyone that hasn’t suffered through it. Again, the presence of an animal can means the difference between survival and the kind of hopelessness that leads to death.
Perhaps one of the reasons that animals comprehend grief so well is that they, themselves, experience it — and so strongly that many species will grieve themselves to death [similar to humans] when they’ve lost someone that means ‘more than the world’ to them.
