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Topic: Pets (09/13/04)
TITLE: Pets and Children's Stories Go Hand In Hand By Cyndy McNaul-Nelson 09/20/04 |
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Animals have always been a big part of our household. God has used animals to teach us patience, endurance, and acceptance of a multiple variety of personalities. It has always amazed me how many different personalities God has created within His beings.
Who would have thought mice had personalities until the one in the kitchen that kept eluding the cats had become quite friendly. He knew when I was cooking and would come out to beg a morsel or two. I couldn’t refuse him!
Or how about the squirrel that scampers across our deck, puts his front paws on our sliding glass doors to alert us of empty feeders in the yard. He does that particularly in the winter when temps drop to twenty and thirty degrees below zero.
Around the end of March I always get the humming bird feeders cleaned, because the faithful little guy always hangs in mid air outside the same sliding glass doors to tell me he is back and ready for nectar after his long flight from Central and South America. He usually grabs my attention in April when there are few flowers producing the nectar he seeks.
We all know that the birds are singing the praises of their heavenly maker when they start their aria, but who would have thought they’d join in when their human caretaker began singing to her Noble Savior. I was asked to make a tape of current worship praise songs for a group of persecuted believers in Sri Lanka. I sang without any musical instruments in my kitchen where the birds were nestled in their cages. The recording taped all the canaries, parakeets, lorikeets, and lovebirds as my orchestra. It turned out to be a true delight for the harassed believers miles from me.
God used my animals to teach me many of His secrets, like when my female Siamese cat nipped my hand to stop my crying over the end of a bad marriage. It worked! I quit crying and moved on with my life through her motherly techniques.
When God brought abused animals into our midst, He taught us how to work and soothe the symptoms of abuse. God taught us patience most of all when working with psycho cats, dogs, birds, fish, and even frogs. The work itself is noble enough in ideal, because God did put us in charge of His creatures.
God took this job of rescue to the human level. He had already taught us the concept of rescuing the animals, but He started bringing in the disturbed children. What an infinite array of personalities, just like in the animals! (I don’t know about you folks, but in my corner of heaven, I’m having animals and children.)
Many of these children are abused and neglected. Many have behavior issues and are seriously disturbed. Much supervision, patience and divinely given love is needed when working with children of autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disease. We can truthfully say that our success in working around disturbed children comes from what God has taught us while taking in disturbed animals.
Our pets and children’s stories go hand in hand. We spent nine months working with street kids in a large inner city. Gang and drug activities were prevalent. There were children murdered in their beds weekly because the bullets flying from drive by shootings penetrated their bedroom walls at night.
After being in the big city for just two weeks, I heard gang activity late one night by our old car from inside our one room living quarters. I shared the news with my husband, but cautioned him against taking heroic efforts to save parts of the old vehicle. “Let them take what they want,” I advised him while saying a quick prayer.
My husband observed their partying behavior as they sat atop our car. Dutifully, he did as I asked and remained pensive. After a time, a huge, black, long, haired wolf of a dog crept up to the group under the cover of darkness. He stood taller than the headlights of our car. The big dog growled and barked scaring the gang away, causing them to drop debris in their hasty retreat while leaving the car intact. Our car wasn’t touched by the gangs in that area for the remainder of our work in the inner city. So many of our pets and children’s stories go hand in hand, teaching us further the secrets of our God.