Animal Friends

After my mom read me The Secret Garden when I was about five or six, I was convinced that the robins in my yard could talk to me and unveil secrets. I longed for them to lead me to an opening in the fence of my backyard that would reveal an undiscovered ​“bit of earth” to call my own.

I didn’t grow up on a farm or in a particularly wildlife-rich environment. But there were critters, nonetheless. And the ones that lived in my backyard appeared to my childhood sensibilities to be both friends and protectees. I was eager to have a role in God’s caretaking mission on earth.

One spring, when the massive nest of caterpillar larvae in our double black cherry tree suddenly erupted with thousands of baby caterpillars, I felt these hatchlings needed for me to make them an orphanage out of sticks and to bring them food and water.

I have loved seeing my kids express that same instinct to befriend and protect God’s world. For instance, Henry has discovered that every April, a colony of ground-nesting bees emerges from the soil in one part of our yard. Eager to befriend them, he watched their movements with a close eye and tried bringing them offerings of flowers and food. When he realized that this variety of bee does not sting, he decided to catch some of them, observe them up close, and carry them around with him for a bit before releasing them. One that was overhandled died, and Henry was so sorry about it that he built a tiny burial mound for the deceased bee and gave it a proper funeral with flowers, hymns, and a cross. In his childlike way, he was participating in what he felt to be good work: collaboration with the God who cares for every sparrow — and surely every mason bee too.

Losing Touch with the Creator 

“God wants to be seen,” the medieval author Julian of Norwich proclaims, ​“and he wishes to be sought, and he wishes to be expected, and he wishes to be trusted.”

Make no mistake, though the Almighty is invisible, he has filled the cosmos with his fingerprints and activity so that all of us can, as Paul wrote, ​“fumble about for him and find him — though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ​‘In him we live and move and have our being”’ (Acts 17:27 – 28). God is hiding in plain sight, so to speak. And he means for the finding to be delightful for us.

God is longing to show himself to us as clearly and beautifully as our limited human senses can possibly take him in. But for all of us, young and old, learning to see him and trust him is a bit of a process, which is why having a full and unrushed time to be a kid and experience childhood’s fertile spaces for spiritual growth is so essential.

Chief among those spaces where God reveals himself to little ones and develops the bonds of attraction and trust is the realm of nature. The fact that nature is an excellent starting place for children to connect with God fits with the pattern of how God first introduced himself to humanity — as the Creator of a beautiful world. Every created thing is radiant with his touch and ready to speak something to children about the Maker.

But of all the generations of humans since the very beginning, the current generation might be the most disconnected from God’s self-revelation in nature. Kids with busy schedules and media-saturated attention aren’t likely to sit bored by a window where they might spy a little chipmunk madly dashing across the driveway to squeeze under the shed. Kids conditioned by instant gratification aren’t likely to patiently observe their natural surroundings, expectantly waiting for subtle signs of God’s presence to emerge. And other shifts in modern life have separated children from the land and its animals.

The result is that all of us, grown-ups and young people, have lost a natural pathway to knowing God and to knowing ourselves as his children and his partners in caring for creation. Losing that touchpoint not only shrinks our view of God; it inflates our view of problems. The pall of despair that covers modern life is based on a narrow and distorted view of reality. True, there are significant things that deserve our concern — environmental issues, justice issues, and so on — and God wants to mobilize us as his partners in addressing these needs. But most of what we worry about and most of our children’s anxieties and fears are the result of being overexposed to ugliness and underexposed to majesty. Instead of rushing children into adult awareness of the world’s problems (or the opposite extreme, rushing to shield them from reality) we need to reconnect them with nature, where they can encounter God in the midst of gentle introductions to both hardship and beauty.

Slowing It Down with Animal Friends 

Before God made humans — and this sequence holds up whether you take the Genesis timeline as literal or metaphorical, and even if you look outside Scripture to geological evidence — God made other animals first. All sorts. And he calls his animal creatures good — not that they have a morality, so to speak, but their existence brings something delightful into the broader scheme of all that he has made.

When a child has time to observe, touch, appreciate, and wonder about animals, the inherent goodness of creation is self-evident. Delighting in animals brings kids into agreement with what God calls good. And it invites them to step into the caregiving role that God originally intended for humans to have with the world and its inhabitants.

Paying attention to God’s creation is like a second scripture — a primary form of God’s self-revelation that children at all stages need time to soak in just as much as they need time to soak in the Bible and other forms of revelation. From Charlotte’s and Henry’s earliest days, we pointed enthusiastically to animals in the yard or in storybook illustrations. We made animal sounds and taught them to identify creatures by name. We sang songs about animals and thanked God for the animals in our prayers. Taking time to notice and delight in creatures is something our family has nurtured as an essential part of childhood precisely because friendship with animals is such a natural basis for friendship with God.

In observing and interacting with animals, kids encounter a whole host of important life lessons. Let’s look at a few that we wouldn’t want to rush past:

An antidote to anxiety. ​“I tell you, do not worry about your life,” Jesus told his followers (Luke 12:22). He doesn’t just command it; he follows up with a practical strategy for letting go of worry. ​“Consider the ravens,” he continues; ​“they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn; and yet God feeds them” (Lk 12:24). Jesus understood that nature draws us up to a God’s-eye view of things that supersedes our fears and worries. So kids need time and space to simply look at creatures — in the yard, at the zoo, in books, under microscopes, at the beach, and in the park. Even without making a big theological lesson out of it, simply observing animals and paying attention to their features and behaviors is a mini-lesson on God’s provision and care for everything he has made, including us. Helping children to consider animals ought to be our first line of defense against anxiety, because Jesus commends it.

Wisdom about life and death. The animal kingdom has other lessons too. We might scoff at the old-fashioned ​“birds and the bees” way to broach a certain subject, but I will tell you that when human reproduction came up for discussion with our son, his nonchalant response was, ​“Oh yeah, you mean mating.” Of course, there’s more to it than that, but it was wonderful that his familiarity with the animal kingdom helped to form his understanding of reproduction as a good, natural part of God’s design.

And don’t forget another natural process — death. In generations past, death was much more frequent and familiar to young children. Certainly we don’t want to go back to a more pervasive presence of suffering and death. But since death is still an unavoidable fact of life, it’s good for children to have some introductions that help them understand that life is fragile, that grief is okay, that God is near.

Without opportunities to process death, children can find it hard to grasp the value and preciousness of life. (And that missing value lies at the root of so many tragic forms of violence and contempt in modern culture.) A very small way to work toward helping kids see human life as sacred is to involve them in the lives of animals. The life cycles of pets and wild animals can be small doorways that open up healthy conversation so that death is not an abstract or surreal concept for young people. Let your kids spend an entire afternoon at the beach rescuing stranded starfish. Let them bury the guinea pig and paint a rock for the headstone. Let them place flowers on the miniature burial mound of a mason bee and construct a cross out of sticks and hot glue.

I’m not trying to be morbid, but the well-being of our communities depends, to a degree, on the emotional intelligence of each child. And we can nurture that development by letting kids experience a healthy grief over death and a healthy respect for the miracle of life. Animal friendships help us take little steps into this complex topic.

Doorways to prayer. When kids experience sadness or concern about their animal friends, or joy and delight, those emotions are excellent fodder for conversation with the Lord. Feelings can be a good beginning place for prayer, as the psalms show us.

Oh, the heartfelt prayers our children offered for a sick, stranded kitten, Cookie, who was later renamed Agatha June (perhaps the name change reflects her upward mobility from street kitten to proper inside cat).

Oh, the many expressions of true praise we have witnessed in their ​“thank you, God” prayers for the animal kingdom broadscale, for dinosaurs (and pterosaurs!), for the neighbor’s dog, and so on.

My sister’s child prayed recently, ​“God, we thank you for the poor little bird who died. He flew into the window and broke his poor little neck. He was just trying to get some food or something, and he broke his poor little neck. Amen.”

Children are learning to pray — to enter that interactive conversation with the Holy One that is the most basic ingredient of real relationship — and encouraging kids to care for creatures and to speak with God about them opens a doorway into prayer.

Partners with God. Not only are animals a sign of God’s goodness, a source of important life lessons, and an excellent topic for prayer, they also present children (and all of us) with a realm for collaboration with the Father, Son, and Spirit — good training for an eternity of partnership in God’s kingdom.

I was encouraged by my parents to practice small, caring acts of protection in the lives of animals. And I felt (even before I had language to communicate it) that this was a way of collaborating with the Creator, of doing my small part to partner with him in his work in the world that he made and that he loves.

Older kids need animal joy too. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that pre-teens and teens are especially needy for ways to give and receive affection, for activities that offer them a slower pace and a break from academic and other pressures, and for opportunities to trade indoor, digital interactions for real, embodied connections with the natural world.

When she was thirteen, I took our daughter Charlotte on a trip to Canada where we visited Parc Omega, a 2,200-acre nature preserve outside of Montreal. Charlotte walked around with pygmy deer, fed elk out of her palm, and got up close to bison, boars, and caribou. I saw the delight in her face, and I could sense the refreshment in her spirit.

It takes a little more planning and ingenuity to continue animal friendships as kids get older. But it is important that kids don’t associate growing up with growing out of these connections with the natural world. Older kids have the advantage of age and experience, which means you can let them explore nature with less supervision. Letting kids venture out on their own into the realm of plants and animals can set the stage for a powerful encounter with God. And as children age up, they can connect with the mind of the Maker in more ways — through books about zoology, through the biblical psalms that praise the Lord of all creation, through high quality nature videos, science courses, and hobbies like collecting shark teeth or keeping bees, by taking on more responsibility with pets, or by participating in environmental conservation and care.

Becoming Like Children 

Nature gazing and animal friends aren’t just for children. They also help return grown-ups to a non-anxious, trusting, and prayerful communion with the Lord.

I have an almost daily habit of going to our city’s park — a little Eden in the heart of downtown. Walking beside the river one day, I saw a great blue heron out of the corner of my eye. The large, lanky bird was standing near some boulders at the bottom of the waterfall, and I felt a strange sensation that something amazing was about to happen. The heron seemed locked in on something. Hungry to see his dinosaur-like predation in action, I walked nearer. I waited and watched. He waited and watched.

Suddenly the heron took a couple of steps, stuck his long neck out impossibly far, and to my amazement, jerked his head back with a brown water snake in his bill, as thick around as a garden hose! As I was marveling at the wild majesty of this display, another surprise: The water snake was trying to choke down a sunfish! The sunfish wriggled in the snake’s jaws, and the snake writhed in the heron’s beak, and I stood there with my cup running over, amazed and grateful to be privy to such a spectacular showdown.

No matter how old we are, if we nurture our bond with God’s world and his animal friends, we can ​“become like children” — easily awestruck and ready to seek, expect, and trust our Maker.