Article January 30, 2017 Issue

All creatures cared for by God

Christine Weller

My daughter expressed concern the other day about what the future might hold for some animals we had seen. The first was a dog that was patiently waiting with his master, an unkempt hitchhiker, on the side of the highway. The dog looked tired, and my daughter wondered if it was being well cared for. We had also seen an orphaned lamb being sheltered in a country veterinary office. But that made my daughter think about all the other orphaned animals in the farming community. Would they be provided with similar opportunities, or sent off to an uncertain future?

I realized I needed to look deeper into what I was accepting about the animals. It was not enough to think or say that the hitchhiker probably took good care of his dog, or that there were many responsible and caring people in the world who made efforts to meet the needs of helpless creatures.

Later that evening, under the marginal heading “Creatures of God useful,” I read in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “All of God’s creatures, moving in the harmony of Science, are harmless, useful, indestructible” (Mary Baker Eddy, p. 514), and “God is the Life, or intelligence, which forms and preserves the individuality and identity of animals as well as of men” (p. 550).