Asynchronous Angular Promise and Variable Initialization

I have a factory that looks like such:

app.factory('thingFactory', function($http) {

    var factory = {};   
    var things = [];

    factory.refreshThings = function() {
        return $http.post('/GetThings');
    }

    factory.initializeThings = factory.refreshThings()
        .then(function(response) {
            things = response.data;
        }, function(response){
            // some error handling code here...
        });

    factory.getThings = function() {
        return things;
    }

    return factory;
}

and a controller

app.controller('myController', function($scope, thingFactory) {
    $scope.things = thingFactory.getThings();
}

Because of the asynchronous nature of promises, and other collections being initialized (in addition to things), should I be concerned with getThings() returning an empty array, and thus, returning before the $http.post() call has resolved?

Is this a better alternative?

app.controller('myController', function($scope, thingFactory) {
    $scope.things = []

    thingFactory.initializeThings
        .then(function(response) {
            $scope.things = response.data;
        }, function (response) {
            // some error handling code here...
        });
}

Is there a safe alternative, where I can get the controller to not think about the promise and just safely get the collection from the factory?