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This amused me enough to share with those of you not on Ravelry. Someone posted about her little boy's questions about their dog that had died, and she wanted to know how the rest of us felt about the very important question: Do animals go to heaven?
We lost our eldest cat, Chisa, last autumn. The next eldest, Geeg, is going to be 15 in 4 days, and I’m aware almost every day that my time with him is limited. (I took him to the vet for some facial swelling last week and I was so relieved that it was only a gum infection that I broke down in tears in the parking lot and had to wait to drive him home.)
There are verses in the Bible that imply that God takes care of the animals, like Psalm 36:6-7 (Oh Lord, you preserve both man and beast! How priceless is Your unfailing love!). I think there is no specific “animals have an afterlife” verse in the Bible because the Bible is intended for a human audience. If the non-human animals needed religious direction, God would send it to them, and in that case their Bible equivalent wouldn’t talk much about humans.
Jesus says that Heaven has “many mansions”-- surely there could be a single mansion big enough to hold everyone if God wanted there to be, so to me this implies that we all like to live in different kinds of places. If animals go to Heaven that doesn’t have to mean that your mansion is going to have manta rays flopping around all over the living room and centipedes in the bath; those critters would probably be most comfortable in their own kinds of places.
However, I am not entirely sure that our animals are in Heaven waiting on us for 60+ years until we get there; some things suggest that when we die it is like going to sleep, so they might be sleeping until we show up. If I am wrong, then I definitely owe St. Peter an apology, because Chisa would be up at the Pearly Gates right now meowing to be let in. And then back out. And then in. And then out…
We lost our eldest cat, Chisa, last autumn. The next eldest, Geeg, is going to be 15 in 4 days, and I’m aware almost every day that my time with him is limited. (I took him to the vet for some facial swelling last week and I was so relieved that it was only a gum infection that I broke down in tears in the parking lot and had to wait to drive him home.)
There are verses in the Bible that imply that God takes care of the animals, like Psalm 36:6-7 (Oh Lord, you preserve both man and beast! How priceless is Your unfailing love!). I think there is no specific “animals have an afterlife” verse in the Bible because the Bible is intended for a human audience. If the non-human animals needed religious direction, God would send it to them, and in that case their Bible equivalent wouldn’t talk much about humans.
Jesus says that Heaven has “many mansions”-- surely there could be a single mansion big enough to hold everyone if God wanted there to be, so to me this implies that we all like to live in different kinds of places. If animals go to Heaven that doesn’t have to mean that your mansion is going to have manta rays flopping around all over the living room and centipedes in the bath; those critters would probably be most comfortable in their own kinds of places.
However, I am not entirely sure that our animals are in Heaven waiting on us for 60+ years until we get there; some things suggest that when we die it is like going to sleep, so they might be sleeping until we show up. If I am wrong, then I definitely owe St. Peter an apology, because Chisa would be up at the Pearly Gates right now meowing to be let in. And then back out. And then in. And then out…
