Blessing Of The Animals

Perhaps the Blessing of the Animals is the favorite thing I get to do!!

Here are my words from Sunday October 2, 2022:

Ecclesiastes 3:18-22 Common English Bible

I also thought, where human beings are concerned, God tests them to show them that they are but animals because human beings and animals share the same fate. One dies just like the other—both have the same life-breath. Humans are no better off than animals because everything is pointless.

All go to the same place:

all are from the dust;

all return to the dust.

Who knows if a human being’s life-breath rises upward while an animal’s life-breath descends into the earth? So I perceived that there was nothing better for human beings but to enjoy what they do because that’s what they’re allotted in life. Who, really, is able to see what will happen in the future?

The word of God….

I am over joyed to speak to such a diverse group – some of you may not understand everything I have to say, but perhaps your human companions can somehow further communicate the few words I have to share.

Like most good talks, I have three points.

First, I want to tell you why we bless you. I feel like I could Just say “because you are amazing” and that would suffice but in all honesty, there is no way I could name all the reasons! but I will try to share with you a few reasons.

We bless you for the same reason we bless ourselves or bless one another, and similarly receive a blessing from our minister or fellow believer.

In receiving a blessing, we humans are being told that we are holy and beloved by God. And you too, are being told that you are holy and beloved by God.

So we come to bless you today because you are beloved creatures of God. Too we often we humans fail to notice how God indeed cares for you. As the Psalmist says, in Psalm 104 – you all are an expression of God’s wisdom. Each cat, each dog, each sheep, each iguana — each of YOU here has been created by our loving God, and each of you, whether you are a rabbit, or a sheep, or a horse, you reveal something of our Creator in all your being.

Second, I want to remind you that you share the same basic purpose for your lives that we humans have — we are all called to glorify God in our lives.

As we read earlier the writer of Ecclesiastes draws of number of parallels between your lives and those of your human companions. Like human animals, God has created you out of the dust, and to dust you will return. For me Ecclesiastes says that if human animals can hope for an afterlife so can you, and I will fully admit I no doubt believe all dogs go to heaven. However, perhaps the most important thing that you share with us, the human animal, is that you have been created to glorify God in your very being.

If you are a cat, you glorify God by your cat-ness. If you are a dog, you glorify God in your living into you dog-ness. By living your lives as dogs, or as iguanas, or rabbits, or cats, you glorify God, you give pleasure to your Creator.

Third, I want to thank you for ways in which God uses you to reveal God’s very self to us.

Sometimes God has to remind us human beings that your relationship with God is beyond our human comprehension, as we heard in our call to worship God tells Job when Job questions God’s ways.

God reminds Job of how little we humans know of God’s ways. God implores that we ask the animals what they think—let them teach you;

let the birds tell you what’s going on.

Put your ear to the earth—learn the basics.

Listen—the fish in the ocean will tell you their stories.

So, you dogs amongst us, you teach us fidelity, as well as what it is to smell well. You birds, you show us simplicity, as well as graceful flight. You horses, you show us gentleness, as well as speed. You cats amongst us, you not only incite us to curiosity, but your sight is an amazing gift.

So today we bless you in recognition of your holiness and being loved by God. In doing so we recognize that this world is yours as well as ours, because God has put you here, and that is the only rationale for your existence that you need.

Finally, we bless you in recognition that you reveal God to us in ways we sometime barely comprehend, and remind us in that we are not at the center of the universe.

Like you, we are God’s creatures.