We recently decided to adopt a pet. Our last pet, our cat, Bear, had died 12 years ago at the age of 21. After that it took a while for us to feel ready to get back into pets. We had spent some years overseas, and then we were not really thinking much about it when we came back to the States. But now that we are feeling more settled, and with grandkids near, we decided it was time.
At first we would try to get a dog. We had never had a dog, though my family had several dogs when I was growing up. Sherwood, our city, is the most dog friendly place I’ve ever seen. People are always walking their dogs. It seemed like a good idea.
But where to get a dog? We’ve heard the constant encouragements from society to adopt from a shelter rather than buy from a pet store or breeder. By doing that we’d lessen the surplus dog population. It would be good deed, right? But I was not looking forward to the discomfort I imagined in seeing the sad eyes of the dogs in the shelter as we would take only one dog home. But we would still do it! We had been led to believe that we should do our good deed to reduce the surplus dog population.
The reality was very different. I called a nearby dog shelter expecting to hear the grateful voice of someone eager to have us take a dog off their hands. But no one answered the phone. I tried another shelter. No one answered that phone either. I looked at the online applications for dog adoptions. They were strict! One of them seemed too demanding. This was a far cry from the imagined scenario of rescuing a dog from an overwhelmed shelter. Instead it seemed to be a seller’s market with demand exceeding supply. It was more like “take a number and get in line.”
This was a total surprise.
Then we saw an online ad for a dog available for adoption, presumably at a shelter. The ad said, “Portland, OR” with an adoption fee of $200 which included neutering. This sounded reasonable. We imagined driving to Portland, seeing the dog in the shelter, paying the fee and coming home with our new pet. But when we pursued it, we found that the dog was being fostered in Mexico, had not yet been neutered, and the adoption fee was $750! We were told that, after acceptance of our application, we could pay the fee and meet the dog at the Portland airport. This was getting too weird. We bowed out. Again, it felt like “take a number and get in line” mixed in with some misinformation. Our assumption of the overcrowded dog shelter was wrong.
We decided to try to adopt a cat instead. This should be easier, as there was a cat shelter in our town. It turns out that it was the largest cat shelter in the whole Pacific Northwest. Alice and I went there unannounced. It was not at all a sad place. It was quite professional. They had rules for adopting a cat. There was an application, and even a required interview. The adoption fee was not cheap: $225 (for kittens, less for older cats). At the end of the process, we came home with a three-month old kitten: our cute little Sunny. The whole thing was eye-opening. As in the case with dogs, demand seemed to exceed supply. In fact we were told that kittens are in such high demand that they would be adopted within hours of arrival at the shelter. We got the impression that the older cats would be adopted pretty soon too. Again, our assumptions of the sad, overwhelmed shelter were proved wrong. That part of it was good; there was less sadness and desperation than we assumed. But I still felt kind of misled about this issue.
There was a gap between what we thought we knew and what reality was. Only at the end of the process were our eyes opened. There was a gap between assumptions and reality.
This gap between reality and assumption exists in other areas.
One area, where I am in the middle of the gap right now, concerns the fruit trees (olive, pear, nectarine, apricot) that I planted in our backyard last fall. Will they bear fruit this summer though they are young and small? It’s Oregon; things grow here. They’ve already sprouted leaves and flowers, but it might be too much to hope for that they will bear fruit in this first year. I’ll find my answer in a few months. I won’t know for sure until it happens.
What about those ‘gap areas’ that actually are important? The biggest area, of course, is the spiritual. God allows a gap here. He doesn’t give us full knowledge and answer every question. He lets us live in an arena of partial knowledge. For example: He doesn’t appear to us, but He gives evidence of His presence.
Unlike our cat adoption process, where we assumed something wrongly but later found the truth, or with our trees where we will have to wait to see if they will bear fruit, with God it is more like a true story where we are given the plotline, and we are even told the ending, but some of the details are left out. We might be frustrated at the lack of details, but God wants us to know that this matter of faith is about believing in what you do know without knowing everything. What we have is sufficient for faith. The Bible says we (Christians) presently walk by faith, but one day we will walk by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7). We are also told that we will know more in heaven than we do now: “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known,” (1 Corinthians 13:12). We live in that gap.
But one day the gap will be closed. In the meantime we walk by faith. We know that God exists, but we cannot see him. We are told that Christ is coming back, but not when. This incomplete information might make us uncomfortable, but it is God’s will that we live in it now. God wants that gap to produce longing, hope and anticipation in us.
When the day comes that we ‘walk by sight’ we will look back at this time and know that all the difficult struggles and loose ends were worth it. The frustrations we presently have, which sometimes bother us so much, will seem a small and temporary step in the context of our whole eternal life.
But some don’t handle it right. They demand too much. They get too demanding. They want sight and certainty…or else they won’t believe. That’s too bad. They should handle it better. We don’t need to know everything. We have enough to believe.