We buried Duke. We had not known him long. We didn’t have a great deal in common. His illness came on suddenly. Lisa and I had visited him, sought to comfort him, and prayed for him. When the sun rose the next day, however Duke had gone the way of all flesh. There were some who warned me against becoming close, knowing this death was, sooner or later, inevitable. But Duke was so friendly, so fun, so handsome, we had little choice.
Duke was a young bull Lisa and I had purchased at auction just a few weeks ago. A beautiful red calf, we brought him to our farm to raise him up for meat. That’s why people warned us. “How are you going to be able to eat an animal you’ve named?” I didn’t heed that counsel. I explained, in fact, that I would have no trouble eating him when the time came. That’s the strange, but I’d argue, wonderful place farm animals put us.
Proverbs 12:10 tells us “A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal.” Nathan the prophet, in II Samuel 12, in his allegory that exposed David’s guilt with Bathsheba, describes a man who so loved his lone lamb that she was like a daughter to him. In both instances we see that it is fitting for a man to care for his animals, understandable. We don’t take a coldly efficient perspective on our animals. We don’t treat them like living automatons, like fleshy machines.
Instead, we care for them, meet their needs, even love them. None of which undoes the great gap that separates man from animals. Grown adults referring to their pets as “fur babies” is lunacy on the level of a boy who thinks he’s a girl. But that doesn’t mean there is something wrong with loving our pets, or our farm animals. We don’t elevate animals above their station, but we do stoop down to it.
The gap between man and animal, however, is microscopic in comparison to the gap between Creator and creature. We exist for His glory. We belong to Him. We are not merely sustained by Him, but it is in Him that we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). We are, apart from His grace, nothing more than dust and rebellion. And yet, He loves us, every mother’s son of us.
This doesn’t make us His equal. It doesn’t change our purpose, which is always to make manifest His glory. But it reminds us that one way He is glorified in us is by how He condescends to us. Perhaps nothing sets Him apart more from us than that He draws near to us.
We should not be surprised to find His transcendence and His immanence would be inseparably bound together. The Lord our God, after all, the Lord is one (Deut. 6:4). What has surprised me these past few days is the blessing of getting just a taste of this in the midst of the hardship of losing our beloved friend Duke.