A Little Bit Like Heaven

All our animals are living in harmony right now, even ones that shouldn’t be.  It’s odd.  Dogs are supposed to chase cats, right?  Ours don’t.  You’d expect cats to stalk and pounce on a chick or duckling from time to time.  Not ours.  Have you ever met a horse that stands over a laboring cow and licks her belly as though trying to ease her labor pains?  Ours does.  There are moments on our franch that make me think about the way heaven will be.  There’s when our dogs and cats gather around during the chicks and ducklings “recess” time.  This is when our children take them from their brooder rings in the shed to let them freely roam the backyard.  Our dogs and cats settle down in the lush spring grass to watch as the chicks and ducklings explore the franch for the first time.  You’d be amazed to see our hyper border collie puppy stay perfectly still as our youngest child puts a duckling on its head.  Then, there’s the sweet relationship between our horse and our cows.  Our horse is a team roping horse that my husband trains to chase down cows so he can rope its back legs after his partner ropes the front legs.  Our horse does so at the slightest touch of my husband’s heel on his side, and at top speed.  But, on that very same day, don’t be surprised to find our horse calmly standing watch over our cows and their calves like he’s protecting them.  Our neighbor remarked one day that it looks like the horse is preaching a sermon standing over them and the prostrate cows are contemplating his words as they slowly chew their cud.  He’s like the wise old Skin Horse in The Velveteen Rabbit with all the answers.  He’s the patriarch of the franch – the oldest and very first of all our franch animals.  We need Fern from Charlotte’s Web to listen in.  Maybe, she’d hear him reciting Romans 12:16 from memory, “Live in harmony with one another.”  Or perhaps he’s explaining to the cows the promised day of Isaiah 11:6, “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them.”  Because it’s a little bit like that on our franch.

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