Waiting For Us At Home

"The beluga whale who saved a free-diver who had cramped up 20 feet below the surface."

"The staffordshire bull terrier who protected her owner from a machete gang."

I recently came across a list of 14 stories that “prove animals have souls.” While this is quite the claim to brazenly throw out into the world wide web, the supporting evidence included some anecdotes of animal behavior that are undeniable and eerily comparable to human conduct. Granted, some examples are just a bit too much of a stretch; just because cows stress levels seemingly rise when they are apart from their preferred heifer besties, doesn’t really prove that Dairy Queen and Mr. Beefy are off to heaven once their souls are sacrificed for the growing boys who rank a nice steak with fast cars and pretty women.

On the other hand, there is something simultaneously disconcerting and awe-inspiring in the now famous story of Christian the Lion that leaves one a greater sense of hidden depth contained in our seemingly lesser animal friends. For those unaware of the event, two brothers raised a lion cub in 1969, released him into the wild, and returned a year later only to be told the lion was now head of the pride and unlikely to remember them. Footage of the reunion temporarily breaks down all ideas of the boundary between wild animals and humans. Check it out:

A similar story is on the list of a previously human-raised gorilla who was released into the wild and became hostile to humans, only to gloriously embrace his old friend who had raised him for 5 years and courageously travel to West Africa in order to reunite. Kwibi and Damian shared a bond that defied normal expectations of how animals interact with people.

The stories abound; a nursing home cat that senses death, a Jack Russell Terrier that sacrificed himself for five children being attacked by wild dogs, a German Shepherd who unexpectedly became a seeing eye dog for a blind spaniel. Animals seem to continually surprise us with their seemingly human characteristics.

This article and accompanying pictures immediately got my mind spinning, wondering to what extent these are glimpses into how Adam and Eve must have communed with the variety of creatures in the Garden before the fall separated man from both God and Nature. How must it have felt to lounge with the lions? Did one of God’s lions embrace Adam in a powerful, encompassing hug (just as Christian the Lion did with John and Ace) as a regular occurrence? I imagine Eve just nonchalantly strolling with a Gorilla, with any sense of danger we would feel now being entirely nonexistent. I also think of the verse in Genesis: “And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground - I give every green plant for food. ” (Genesis 1:30). Gators weren’t attacking giraffes and the lion would rest with the lamb. Harmonious relationships abounded, between every animal to animal, beast to man, and most importantly between man and God himself.

I’m filled with a renewed sense of awe regarding the time before the fall. Of course the cardinal joy would have been to be with God and live as he fully intended, but also, the relationships with animals must have been incredible. And I for one cannot wait to see how God truly meant it to be, along with the multitude of other experiences we cannot have here on this earth but are waiting for us at home.