God, Lost Dogs and Animals in Heaven | Rev. Adam Hamilton | Church of the Resurrection

2:37 Did you know that there's 120 species of animals mentioned by name in the Bible? That's astounding to me. And if you start going through them all, I went through all of them this week to see which ones were named. You can find them online. And you find, just starting with the letter A, ants, antelopes, apes, asps, asses, baboons, badgers, bats, bears, bees, birds, boar, buffalo, and buzzards. And that's just a few of the A's and B's. You got 24 more letters left in the alphabet. that. I mean, there's a lot of animals listed in Scripture. And it's clear that God takes delight in the animals. God really loves the animals. God created them. Now, I believe in evolution, but I believe that God orchestrates, works through the evolutionary process, and takes great delight in bringing forth the variety of species that inhabit our planet. And those that have gone before that don't exist today, the ones that we marvel at when we look at their fossils, God took delight in all of those as well. God's care for the animals becomes a metaphor in Scripture for God's care for us.

3:36 So God talks about himself as a shepherd and the people of Israel as the sheep. Jesus says, I am the good shepherd. And he talks about the people who are his followers as his sheep. And so we look at these metaphors. Jesus tells parables about sheep and shepherds. Now in the time of Jesus and in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, people had sheep. Almost everybody had sheep. Almost everybody, many of the people had sheep. Today, I'm guessing maybe there's a handful of you who have sheep who are listening to this sermon. Most of us don't have sheep. our animals that we care for are dogs and cats primarily, and a few other little critters as well, but dogs and cats primarily. So I want to ask you a question. Go ahead and raise your hands. How many of you have ever had a pet? Raise your hand. All right, how many of you currently have a cat? Raise your hand. How many of you currently have a dog? Raise your hand. How many of you have some other kind of critter? Raise your hand. All right, if you have tarantulas, spider, you have tarantulas, or you have rats, or you have mice, or you have snakes, I don't even want to hear about it.

4:31 but for the rest of you who have the kind of ordinary pets that most of us have, nothing wrong with those kind of pets either. They just kind of creep me out just a little bit. But, you know, animals are just an important part of our lives as humans. Most of us at some point in our lives have had some kind of pets. All right, so today in the sermon, we're continuing in this series focused on God and animals that ties into our vacation Bible camp that kicks off this week. We've got 1,400 children and 400, 4 to 500 volunteers, youth, and adults who are helping as they're learning about the wild kingdom, God's kingdom, the animals, and what we can learn from them. We're going to do the same today. And in this sermon, we're going to look at three big ideas. One is what we learn from dogs in particular about fear and how to overcome it. Then we're going to look at what we learn from dogs about being lost and being found. And then finally, we're going to talk about our love for our animals and the question that comes up when they pass, and that is, will there be pets? Will our animals be in heaven?

5:24 So that's where we're heading today, a very simple sermon. And I'd love for you to take notes if you want to write some things down as we go along. So let's start by talking about fear. I want to remind you that all of us are wired for fear. Not just humans, but all vertebrates have a structure in their brain called the amygdala. There's actually two. These are almond-shaped structures, and I'll show you here on a brain. It's kind of spread out a little bit more than what actually happens in the human brain, but you can see the amygdala here and here. The amygdala bypass your reasoning, your higher-level thinking, whenever there is a sense that there might be something that you should be afraid of. They're designed to protect you. Not just you, but again, every vertebrate has amygdala. So anything that has a spinal column has amygdala. All of the animals you think of that are your pets, they have the same function, the same capacity to sense with their eyes, their smell, their hearing, their sensation, you know, something that might be a danger or a threat to them. And to protect them, they kick into high gear.

6:17 I mean, instantly before you can even process in your brain, your chemicals are flowing in your body and it's making you ready to either fight, flee, or freeze. And this happens in the animal kingdom. It happens for us. So we are hardwired for fear. And that is a blessing until it's not. So what happens with many of us, with all of us, is we get afraid. We flinch at things that we don't need to be afraid of. I remember being in a safari in Africa and around a watering hole. And there were all of these animals. And it was just so amazing. This was years and years ago on a mission trip. But we ended by going to this safari. And every little sound and the antelope were flinching. And the zebras were worried that the lions might be coming to get them. And generally, they weren't. It's just that they were wired to be afraid of every single sound that they heard. And that's how it is with us. You may remember the acronym for fear, false events appearing real. False events appearing real. Generally speaking, we're afraid of things that aren't going to happen. And I just remind you, we also have this natural capacity.

7:12 We're sort of hardwired to catastrophize. We assume the worst thing is going to happen. And then we live paralyzed by our fear. We can't live that way. And so part of what we learn from our animals is how do they respond when they're afraid? What do they do in order to overcome their fear? Now, I wanna remind you, I've got two dogs. This is Maybel. She's our oldest. She's 10 years old and just love this little dog. And she is precious. I just took that picture this weekend. And then we have Rocky. So the next picture, you'll see Maybel and Rocky. Rocky is two years old. Maybel is 10 years old. And they are just an important part of our family. Now, when they see something or hear something they notice something that they think might be a threat, they start, the hackles come up, the hair on the back of their neck goes up, they begin barking like crazy. Last week, we saw a turtle in the middle of the road. They ran to the turtle and perceiving it as a possible threat, they're running, then what are they gonna do?

8:04 Fight, flee, or freeze? Well, there's two of them and one turtle, and that turtle's smaller. So somehow in their little dog brains, they begin barking like crazy at that turtle, trying to scare it away. But that turtle didn't go running off. Instead, it just clamped closed its shell and went into hiding. See, the turtle's amygdala's kicked in, and it's terrified of these two dogs that are, you know, barking at it. And so there's no way that our dogs were going to eat the turtle. It didn't really need to be afraid. And there was no way that that turtle was a threat to our dogs. But you see, the whole scene was chaos due to fear. This is what happens in our lives as well. So what do we learn from dogs about how to overcome fear? On Monday of this week, we were at the Lake of the Ozarks, and our dogs, there was a thunderstorm that came up in the middle of the night. Well, it's like early morning, maybe 5 in the morning. I was sound asleep. Levon was not asleep. And then suddenly I hear our dogs jump up on the bed. Well, Maybel was already up there. Rocky jumps up on the bed and he starts, we call it army crawling.

8:58 He starts crawling closer and closer to our faces. And, you know, I can hear him kind of whining just a little bit. Now, he looks and he sees, he gets right up to our faces and he sees that our eyes are closed. He knows, don't mess with them when their eyes are closed. It'll be worse than the thunder. But I could tell he's there and, you know, he's breathing right next to my face. And here's the thing. Once he could see my face, he settled down and he went back to sleep. Didn't matter that it was still thundering outside. As long as he was close to his master, he knew he was going to be okay. Are you listening? As once he was close to his master, he knew it was going to be okay. So that reminds me in scripture how often we find ourselves afraid. I think about Psalm 56. So in Psalm 56, David, the superscript says that David had just been captured by his enemies, the Philistines, in the town of Gath. So he's been captured by his enemies. And then he writes this psalm in response.

9:50 And in verse three and four, it says, exalted one, whenever I'm afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, I trust in God, I won't be afraid. What can mere flesh do to me? I want you to notice this for just a moment. He's talking about being afraid. He is afraid. Whenever I'm afraid. David doesn't say, I'm never afraid because the Lord is my shepherd. No, when I am afraid. So we're going to be afraid sometimes in life. Even King David was afraid sometimes. At this point, he was not even yet king, I don't think. He was just a, he was, you know, on his pathway towards being king. But he was afraid of the Philistines. He was right to be afraid of the Philistines. So what does he do? He is going to put his trust in God, in God whose word I praise. Well, you don't notice this. So he's writing this. It's set to music. He's going to sing it. He's going to sing it in his own mind. He's going to say the words. You see, he's going to say the words, and he's going to sing the words until it gets into his head and into his heart. And then he says this. He says, you know, I'm not going to be afraid. I'm going to trust in God.

10:42 I won't be afraid. What can mere flesh do to me? What could it do to him? The Philistines could kill him. They'd tear him apart limb by limb. So there was every reason to be afraid. He maybe was going to die, but he was still going to trust in God. He was going to trust in God that somehow, even if he should perish at the hands of the Philistines, he was going to be okay. Right? See, this is what that looks like when we trust in our master, when we're close to our master. How do we get close to God? Well, we sing. I mean, that's why worship is so important. Sometimes we think, well, I don't really need to go to church. I don't really need worship. Yes, you do. If you want to be close to your master, there's something about singing the words of Scripture, singing the Psalms that draws us close to God. There's something about praying and talking to God. There's something about reciting the words of Scripture. There's something about hearing the truth about who God is and something about being with God's people. All of those things help us to feel closer to God. The spiritual disciplines help us to feel closer to God, help us to know that we're near God.

11:37 And when we're near God, we don't have to be afraid. I was thinking this week as I was watching the coverage of Camp Mystic and what happened, you know, in the Guadalupe River and the terrible floods that happened there. And watching on one of the videos went viral of a bus of schoolgirls who were down at Camp Mystic. And as they were driving away and one girl was filming out the window and you could see all the devastation and they were singing hymns to God as they were driving away. I was thinking about being in Haiti a number of years ago after the terrible earthquake that afflicted them. and when I was there, we'd gone down to meet with officials to figure out what our church and other United Methodist churches could do and I was standing outside of a school building that had collapsed, bodies of children still inside the school building as they were taking us to show us these places and the devastation and I listened and I heard the sound of parents and grandparents singing to God in the midst of their pain. Right, the closer we are to God, what we realize is, what can mere flesh do to me?

12:30 And God, I trust and I will not be afraid. All right, that leads to this idea of becoming lost. So a week ago, our family, so we spent about seven days at the Lake of the Ozarks, eight days at the Lake of the Ozarks on vacation. We were there for the 4th of July. Our daughters were there. My future son-in-law, our granddaughter was there and a couple from Texas who were friends of ours and our dogs. Now in the Lake of the Ozarks, people start shooting off fireworks. Well, they shoot off fireworks all the time, but they really get intense the week of the 4th of July, not just on the 4th of July, but the nights before. So we had a nice cookout. I think I'd cooked pork on the grill. We had just finished dinner and somebody said, you know, we probably need to let the dogs out to go potty before the fireworks start around here. And so we let the dogs out. They ran up the hill. I think I let the dogs out. They ran up the hill and they're chasing a squirrel or something. They get just up at the top of the hill and they never wander off.

13:24 So they get up there and they're going to do their business. And all of a sudden, a neighbor across the cove shoots off one of those really loud, booming fireworks. There's no fireworks to it except for just the sound. And with that sound, my dogs are terrified, and they start running back, hightailing it back to the house. Now, Rocky's younger. He makes it back first and comes inside. Maybell's still making her way down the hill when another boom goes off. And I think to my dog, Maybell, she thinks it's coming from the house, and she turns around and she runs. Now, I didn't see that part of it. The kids said, no, she, you know, our granddaughter said, no, I think she went the other direction. I thought maybe she'd come inside. So there were people coming in and out. I thought she'd come inside. Wasn't too worried about it. But 10 minutes later, somebody says, I think LaVon said, where's Maybel? I don't know where she is. I think she's in the house. We looked all the way through the house. We looked underneath the beds. We looked everywhere. There was no Maybel. So we go outside and we start calling for her. Here, Maybel. Come on, Maybel. Come on, girl. Come on. No sign of her. Now we're getting a little nervous because, you know, there's more fireworks coming after dark and we don't want her out there left to her own after dark.

14:21 We're always with her when she's out at the lake after dark. So, you know, I'm not worried. she's going to come back. She never wanders very far off. I'm doing the dishes, which is a rare thing for me, but I was doing the dishes down there. And they all are out looking for Maybel. 30 minutes go by, no sign of Maybel. So then I'm getting nervous too. We all go to the neighbors. We go to every neighbor's house, knock on the door. Have you seen our dog? Please watch out for her. 30 minutes go by, no sign of Maybel. LaVon drives around the neighborhood, no sign of her. Finally, I get Stella in the car and I said, come on, Stella. We went in the truck and we drove up. I drove a mile one direction and a mile another direction. Now, she never goes that far away, and you got to go up a big hill to get there, no sign of Maybel. We came back, I'm really getting worried now, because you see at the Lake of the Ozarks after dark, there are some critters that are big enough that could eat one of my dogs. And I was worried, you know, even if that didn't happen, just the sheer sound of the fireworks at night by herself in the woods, you know, and I'm really concerned for her. I really love this little girl. And so, you know, we contacted one of our neighbors who was on the Facebook community page and said, can you get on the page and mention that We've lost our dog.

15:24 And the Nextdoor app. And so, and we drove, Stella and I got in the truck. We drove again. As we're driving that mile, each way, you know, the windows down. Mabel, come on, Mabel. Come on, Mabel. Come on, girl. Come on, girl. No sign of her. We pull back into the house. We say, somebody found her. And somebody had seen this picture on Facebook. I need help finding this little girl's family. I found her wandering the road on Blue Jay at Osage Oaks Drive. Super sweet. Has a pink and white flower collar on, but no tags. Her tags had broken off the week before. I was getting ready to order her new tags, but I wasn't worried at the lake because she always stays nearby. And how grateful I was that somebody found her. So Stella and I got back in the truck. We drove over there. And when she saw us, you know, she just looked like she was totally disoriented and afraid. She'd walked a long ways. And I took her in my arms and she just held on, you know. Like, ah, my master's here.

16:16 He's found me. Right? And so I was thinking about, why am I telling you this story? I'm telling you this story because in it, it's a great metaphor for what we find in Scripture. In the Bible, of course, people didn't have, well, some had dogs and cats, but generally they did have other kind of animals. And so sometimes the sheep wandered away. And this is a metaphor that's used frequently in the Bible for God and his people. So in Ezekiel chapter 34, the leaders of Israel were not taking care of the sheep, the people, the shepherds, the priests, and the leaders of the people. They were not carefully tending the people. And so terrible things had happened. The Babylonians had come in and destroyed the city of Jerusalem, taken many of the Jewish people into exile in Babylon. And so God says this through Ezekiel to the people. He says, listen, you have failed. The shepherds of Israel have failed. And my people have been left to be scattered as food for the wild animals. And he says, therefore, I will seek the lost. God says this, I will seek the lost.

17:10 I will bring back the strayed and I will bind up the injured and I will strengthen the weak. This is the heart of God for people who've wandered away. from God. I think of Jesus' ministry in Luke chapter 19, verse 10, a passage I ask all of our members to memorize. We capture this idea of what Jesus came to do. And he says, the Son of Man came to seek and to save those who are lost. He's drawing directly from Ezekiel chapter 34. He says, I've come in the flesh to do what God said he would do in Ezekiel 34, to seek and to save the lost. And Jesus is constantly scanning the horizon, meeting with people, caring for people, tending people who'd been pushed away from church, pushed away from God, not church, synagogue, pushed away from God and trying to bring them back again. That is his heart's desire. That is why I'll tell you at Church of the Resurrection, our purpose statement is to build a Christian community where non-religious and nominally religious people are becoming deeply committed Christians. Everything we do, we're asking this question. How can we be the church for the people who are lost, the people who have strayed? How can we go out and find the people who have lost their way or slowly wandered away from God? That is our driving passion here, is to help people come.

18:12 Why? Because it was Jesus driving passion. I love it in one of his parables. Jesus says there was a shepherd who had a hundred sheep and one of them wandered away. Wouldn't he leave the 99 behind to go find that one lost sheep? And then he says this, and when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors saying to them, rejoice with me for I have found my sheep that was lost. Just so I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance. Jesus describes himself as a good shepherd. And Matthew notes that he looked on the multitudes that were following him, the people in the community who were not engaged, probably in the synagogue or anything else. He had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. I was reminded both in our worry for Mabel and our intense dog hunt for her, and then the joy that we felt when we finally found her, that this is the heart of God for us.

19:11 So I want to ask you this question. Have you ever felt lost? Have you ever felt like you wandered away? And you've heard this before, but if you feel far from God, which of you moved? Was it you or was it God? And I tell you, God never runs away from you, but we often slowly wander away from God. We become disoriented by things that happen in life, by the booms that happen in life or the things that happen to us. We find ourselves disoriented. We find ourselves wandering away from the one who would hold us and keep us and protect us. We find ourselves drawn away from God by things that we think look appealing, like our dogs running into the woods after deer or something else. We find ourselves drawn away from God, and God longs for us to come back home.

19:53 I'm going to ask you today, have you wandered from God? And I just want you to know this. If you have, God's not angry. God desperately wants you back. And the very fact that you're watching this service, maybe you're watching on TV, you're at one of our locations, you're watching online, But the fact that you happen to tune in today or show up at church today, if you've been away for a long time, that may not be an accident. It may be God beckoning you and saying, hey, this part's for you. Come home. There's an old gospel hymn. And if you know it, I'd love to invite you to sing it with me. I have a terrible voice, but I'll invite you to sing it anyway. It just captures this idea of God searching for us. It says this, Softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling, Calling for you and for me See on the portals he's waiting and watching Watching for you and for me Come home, come home You who are weary, come home Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling Calling, O sinner, come home today's a great day to come home to be found again by God he wants you and really for you it's just God I've been lost and I want to come back home and he takes you back all right that leads me to the last question and a question many of you came to church for to hear the answer today and that is will there be pets in heaven now I know for some people that sounds like a corny question like if you've never really deeply loved an animal you haven't ever really felt like they were your companion, you know, like a child or a friend, then this question sounds silly. But if you've ever had an animal that you deeply love, they were just a deep companion for you, a part of your family, then you understand the sentiment. Now, I've lost a lot of animals.

21:46 I've done funerals for gerbils and hamsters and all kinds of things that we've lost bunnies, you know, over the years with our kids. But there's a couple of animals that have been really important to me that we've lost. One of them was our dog, Maggie. She was a beagle and she died nine years ago. Here's a picture of her. And I just love this dog. And as she was getting older, I knew the time was drawing near for her passing. About a year before she died, we got our oldest dog now, Maybel. And I drove her to the vet the day that she passed. And after she died, I will tell you, I don't know that I've ever cried so hard for anything or anyone else as I did that day. And it's not that I don't, you know, that I loved her more than I love other family members. It's just that, you know, from the time our kids were in middle school, she was there. And then they graduated and our kids were gone. But I'd walk in the door every night and she'd be standing there, her tail wagging, waiting to greet me. Right. She just was such a, you know, sleeping by my feet and just was an important part of my life. And, you know, I've done a lot of funerals for these little animals. But when I prayed over her before I, you know, gave her to the, you know, at the crematorium where they would prepare her for her ashes to be buried.

22:59 I touched her one last time and my prayer was, God, I'd really love to see this little animal of yours. My pet Maggie, I'd like to see her in heaven. I hope maybe there's a chance that these animals have a place in your kingdom. Now that may sound silly to you, but that's how we sometimes feel about the animals that we love. So I was thinking about this and, you know, all of the animals and, you know, I'm thinking, I don't really think that every earthworm that's ever lived on this earth has a place in heaven. Every insect, every reptile, every fish, all the mammals, mice, wolves, lions, bears, dogs, and cats, bunnies, and guinea pigs, which of them go to heaven and which of them don't? I don't know the answer to that for sure, but I can't imagine that every living creature is in heaven. I really hope and pray that there aren't ticks in heaven or poisonous spiders or vicious snakes or anything that might eat me.

23:55 I hope they're not in heaven. But as I think about the question of animals in heaven, I think, and others have thought this before, I think about how when God first created everything, in Genesis chapter one, God created the animals before he even created humans. Right, I mean, there was just, God brings them forth from the dust of the earth, speaks them into existence. Actually, Adam is said to come from the dust of the earth, but whatever God used, he spoke into existence all of these animals. They reflected his glory, right? And when we read through the scripture, we find again and again God's concern for the animals. So I love this story in Psalm 50, verses 10 and 11. Every forest animal already belongs to me, God says, as do the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every mountain bird, even the insects in the field are mine. God knows all of them, all the creatures we haven't even found on this planet in the deep recesses of the sea. God knows them all. They all belong to him. When you come to the New Testament, you find, and by the way, other passages I love in the book of Jonah, you find that you get to the end and God is concerned not only for the humans of Nineveh he's concerned he says for the animals of Nineveh you get to the book of Job and then chapter 38 the last few verses of chapter 38 and all of chapter 39 God describes these beautiful terms how he sees the animals doing things no other human gets to see the mountain goats giving birth and all of these things the Leviathan and the sea and God sees them all and he clearly takes delight in all these creatures they belong to him they matter to him I think about in the New Testament, we have this idea of heaven restored.

25:24 So Eden, the Garden of Eden, where the animals were to begin with even before humans, we find Eden is restored in the New Testament, this picture of the restoration. And that great restoration, and when that happens, in fact, for the Jewish people in Jesus' day, they refer to the place where you went when you died and you were pious, you went to paradise. Paradise was the actual word they used for what we would think of as heaven today. And you remember, Jesus says to the thief on the cross, today you will be with me where? In paradise, right? Paradise was a loan word. It comes directly from the Persian. The word in Greek is paradisos. And paradisos in Persian and in the Greek meant the king's garden. Like the king had this beautiful garden and that garden almost always included animals. It was a menagerie. So it included animals and included plants and included waterfalls, you know, springs, all kinds of things, fountains. And one of the greatest privileges you could have is for the king to invite you to come to paradise with him and to see his gardens.

26:20 And that's a picture of what the world restored will be like. It will be paradise. I love how in the book of Revelation, we read this, Revelation 5.13, and the revelator, John, is having this vision of what paradise looks like. He's having this vision of the heavenly realms. And he says this, I heard every creature, notice that, every creature, not just every human. I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea. I heard everything everywhere say, blessing, honor, glory, and power belong to the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb forever and always. This passage is saying, if you listen to it, it's saying that not just all humans, but every living thing is going to be crying out God's praise, going to be crying out blessing and honor, glory, and power to God and to his Christ. I mean, how powerful, how beautiful is that? I love how in the book of Isaiah, it describes the messianic kingdom. And it says this, in that age when God will restore everything, the wolf will live with the lamb.

27:22 By the way, you see in this image, this is from the resurrection Leawood stained glass window. And you see in the foreground, the wolf lying down with the lamb and the lion there beside. The wolf will lie with the lamb and the leopard will lie down with the young goat. The calf and the young lion will feed together and a little child will lead them. The cow and the bear will graze. Their young will lie down together and the lion will eat straw like an ox. They won't harm or destroy anywhere on my holy mountain. Some of the early church fathers, they believed that when Adam and Eve turned away from God, when humans rebelled against God, it actually had an impact on all of creation. All of creation pays a price for human rebellion against God. And so somehow that affected the animals on our planet too. This was the thinking both in the Hebrew Bible, certainly when you get to the New Testament period and the church after that, was that the animal, the creation was affected. The animals were affected by what humans had done in disobedience.

28:16 Paul says that all of creation groans for the redemption of human beings so that we can be changed and the world can be changed. And so when we think about that, John Wesley, who followed some of those early theologians of the church, the founder of Methodism said, and he cared deeply about animals, and he said that he believed that when humanity was finally restored, when paradise was restored, and this is, I'm quoting from a sermon that he wrote called The General Deliverance. He says, The whole brute creation, that is the animals, will then undoubtedly be restored, not only to the vigor, strength, and swiftness which they had at their creation, but to a far higher degree of each than they ever had enjoyed. They will be restored, not only to that measure of understanding which they had in paradise, but to a degree of it as much higher than that. And what he's inferring is that the animals, when they were first created, had actually a higher intelligence than they did after humans rebelled against God.

29:08 and he's saying that when all things are restored in the kingdom of heaven, the animals that are there will have a higher level of intelligence than they had even in the very beginning. And what he's inferring is that it may be possible that you and your dog might actually communicate with each other in ways that you could never do now. Wouldn't it be amazing to hear your animals be able to communicate with you what they're really feeling and thinking more than just cats purring or dogs licking your face? I mean, that idea, And C.S. Lewis captures it in the Chronicles of Narnia where the animals speak. But it's this beautiful picture. Maybe it's that way. Who knows? We don't know for sure. But wouldn't it be something if our animals were able to somehow communicate more clearly to us? So the question comes in, will there be animals? Will there be pets in heaven? I mean, clearly it looks like there's the biblical authors anticipated animals in the restored paradise. But will our pets be in heaven? And will our animals here on earth be resurrected in some way?

30:03 Do they go on to live in another realm? And I think that might, and this is speculating, but I think that might have to do with their cognitive abilities and their souls. Do animals have souls? Now, my answer to that is they have some kind of soul. And I think that for a couple of reasons. First of all, cognitively, animals can understand certain things. Certain animals, higher level animals can understand certain things. The apes more than cats. But, you know, dogs more than cats. But all of these animals that are our pets, they tend to have some level of understanding. And I thought this was interesting. Applied Animal Behavior Science Journal in 2022 had done a study to see what was the average dog's vocabulary. If you have a dog, I wonder how many words are in your dog's vocabulary. Of course, they're not speaking to you, but they are understanding what you're doing. So sit, dinner, hungry, squirrel. These are all words my dogs seem to know pretty well. Treat, they all know that. Lay down, no, yes. Come here, come. Well, they found in the survey that they'd done, that the mean average was 89 words that a dog knew. Some dog owners said their dogs knew 15 words. Some said they knew 215 words. Somebody once said a border collie had mastered a thousand words. I don't know about that, if that was true or not, but 89 words, just to give you some idea, what is the vocabulary of a 16-month-old human baby? It's about, well, it varies from three words to maybe 20. And so at least when it comes to cognitively understanding words, obviously the animals can't speak back to us, but they've got a pretty good vocabulary. There's some kind of cognition there that's important. On top of that, if you think of the soul as partly expressed through our emotions, our feelings, who could argue that a cat or dog doesn't have some level of emotion, some level of, you know, soul in them? I mean, I feel that with our animals.

31:52 And so I think they have some level of soul, not exactly, maybe the same as yours, something more primitive than that. And so if an animal has a soul, it may just be that God in his mercy and grace would allow some of the animals that we have known and loved the most to be able to join us in God's eternal kingdom. I don't know that's true, but I like the thought of it. All right. I love the story that Jan shared with me. Actually, Lisa shared her mother's story with me. Jan lives in St. Louis along with her husband. They have a dog. The dog's name is Emma, and they join us for worship every weekend. They're a part of our church from St. Louis. And if you're listening today, Jan, thank you for sending this picture. But they were talking about how they, while they gather for worship, Emma, their dog, gathers with them and comes and just sits. And Jan said, you know, my dog knows your voice. And she just sits very calmly during worship. And she said, on Communion Sundays, so once a month when we have Communion Sunday in the sanctuary, she says, on Communion Sunday, we get our communion ready so we can take communion with resurrection. And she said, our dog seems to know that it's going to be time for communion.

32:52 and she comes and she said she's waiting for a treat, but she doesn't like normal when she's waiting for a treat. She's very rambunctious. She's very calm and quiet, just sitting there waiting, hoping that she might receive a treat. And she said, now we give her a treat while we have Holy Communion and we share Holy Communion together. And it's just this very sacred thing. Here's a picture of Emma joining us for worship there. I don't know if you can see her. I love that.

33:15 Okay, listen. I wanna begin to wrap this up by saying, while we've been learning about, you know, whether in asking the question, whether animals will be with us in heaven, the thinking about animals and how they care for their masters might also paint a picture for us of how we face perhaps uncertainty or just how we face death. So I want to share with you a story. I shared it, I don't know, a long time ago here at Resurrection, but it was a story that took place around the turn of the century between the 19th and 20th centuries. It's around the year 1900. And there was a doctor who went out and made house calls. He was driving a horse-drawn carriage. He always took his trusty dog with him. as his friend and as his protector in part. So they would go out and they'd make house calls. Well, he was going, his last house call of the day was at a home where a man was dying. He went to the door, knocked on the door, tied up his horse's carriage there, brought the dog to the front doorstep, and then he went inside.

34:07 He didn't take his dog inside the home with him, but went inside and he checked on this man who was dying, cared for him, did everything he could to bring comfort to him. And then before he left, sitting on the chair next to the bed, the man said to his doctor, Doc, I'm a little afraid. What's on the other side? I'm just a little scared. What's it like, Doc? And just at that moment, this doctor's dog begins to whimper at the door and scratch at the door. And the doc turned to the man lying in the bed and he said, You hear that sound? Yeah. That's my dog. My dog's never been inside your house before. He doesn't know all the things that are on the other side of the door. Here's the only thing he knows is my master is on the other side of the door. and if my master's in there, it must be okay. And he said, that's how I look at heaven. My master's there. And if my master's there, I know it's gotta be okay.

35:02 I wanna wrap this up with a little video. I've shared it a couple of times. I think the last time, about five years ago, but I really enjoy it. It captures some of the things we've been talking about. Wendy Francisco wrote the words and the tune and sings it. Some of you know Don Francisco, who was her husband, contemporary Christian singer in the 1970s. But see if you don't hear God speaking to us through this little video about God and dogs. Take a look.