Dan Morse

Several years ago, we became the custodial “parents” of a female Chesapeake Bay Retriever puppy. Her name was Daisy. She was beautiful, with auburn fur and steely yellowish eyes. She lived her life traveling at hyper-speed. She was busy and curious, and she was a focused and incessant chaser of tennis balls. Man, she was fast! I’d no sooner let fly out of the ball launcher and she’d have chased it down, returned and dropped it by my feet for another round. She was a bundle of energy.

Then one day it happened … Even though still a young dog, she began to slow down and became lethargic. The tennis balls had nowhere near the attraction. She slept more than normal. There was something wrong.

When we took her to the vet, the diagnosis was dire. She was failing fast. She had massive kidney failure. It wasn’t but a short time and the kidney disease took her life. Daisy was gone. I was devastated. Our family took it very hard. A hole was left where Daisy once held a firm and secure place.

If you’ve ever heard Chris Stapleton’s “Maggie’s Song,” you’ll know what I’m talking about. Chris sings about a dog named Maggie, a stray castaway that makes her way into a place of love and prominence in the Stapleton household. If you’ve ever had a pet that you loved, the song will certainly resonate.

This past week, we said goodbye to another family friend. We only knew him for a short time, but my daughter and son-in-law recently acquired a male Anatolian/Great Pyrenees pup to raise on their farm. His name was Vern. He was purposefully acquired to help keep the enemies of their farm animals at bay. Vern was a character … all legs and feet and energy enough for a small pack of dogs. Vern would play hard and crash hard. When he was done playing, you could find him sound asleep somewhere.

In a tragic accident, Vern’s brief life was cut short. It was a farm accident that could not have been prevented. Now Vern is gone, and for such a young pup, he’d already made an impact on those that knew him. Losing a beloved animal is hard.

Thinking recently about Daisy and Maggie and Vern, I was reminded of a quote from British author C.S. Lewis. In a book entitled, “The Four Loves,” Lewis says this: “There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

There’s something about the connectedness and love we feel with beloved pets, whether it be a dog or a cat or a horse or something other, and to lose them leaves us yearning for their company. We’re often overcome with grief and sorrow for their loss.

Part of the reason for our grief is the recognition that death is an intruder. It’s not the way it’s supposed to be. It’s interesting that the Apostle Paul calls death, “The last enemy that shall be destroyed …” The Christian faith does not obfuscate grief and sorrow, and certainly death. The Christian faith addresses these things square on. The loss of our furry friends is excruciatingly difficult, but the Christian faith speaks of a future full of hope and without tears (Revelation 21:4). The Christian faith is anti-Gnostic. In other words, people matter, dogs matter, cats matter and even matter matters.

For now, as Christians, we grieve. We thank God for the joy that dogs and cats and every sort of animal brings into our life and yet knowing with certainty that death will not have the final say. The Author and Creator of life cares about even the smallest sparrow that falls (Matthew 10:29). And surely, He cares for Daisy, Maggie and Vern.

Dan Morse serves with InFaith, a ministry that assists small and rural churches. He can be reached at danjmorse@icloud.com.