The Miracle that is Reproduction

On Labor Day weekend exploring my brother's property with my 8-year-old son, we came across this delightful neonate northern water snake. According to my field guide, the new generation is born late July or August, so this snake is probably about a month old. As I was thinking more about this special encounter, I was marveling at how this little guy, little more than 1/10 the size of a full-grown adult, was such a perfect replica of his parents (apart from "personality" as the adults have a very bad reputation for being quite ill-tempered). Of course reproduction is such a common part of life taking place all around us that it's quite easy to not give it a second thought, but without it none of us, indeed no living thing, would be here.

When I stop to think about it, I can't see the process of reproduction as anything short of miraculous. In the case of this water snake, a male and female meet up in May and breed, then over the course of the next three or four months inside the female's body 20 to 50 perfect miniature replicas are formed. When the time comes, they emerge (live birth in the case of water snakes as opposed to eggs for many other snakes) fully functional reproductions of their parents, able to hunt their own food, grow, find shelter, avoid predators, survive the winter and, in time, to reproduce. The fact that ALL living things reproduce in one way or another may cause us to take this process for granted, but rather than detracting from the miraculous process that this is, it should cause us to marvel at the millions of variations, large and small, that all accomplish the same task -- the preservation of life.

Nor should the fact that the process can be observed and objectively described cause us to miss out on the wonder of it. Even if scientists were able to observe, analyze, understand and explain the whole process from beginning to end, the fact is we are totally incapable of replicating the process in any manner remotely so marvelous. What's the best human-created analogue? Software viruses that replicate themselves across computer systems? As cleverly designed as these may be, they are orders of magnitude more simplistic than the simplest forms of reproduction among living things.

So where does this universal ability to reproduce come from? If one assumes that life is the result of random processes in the primordial soup, then it is inconceiveable to me (excuse the pun) that even IF through some happy circumstances a collection of chemical compounds that could be regarded as "living" arose from the muck, that this organism would arrive with the built-in capacity for reproduction. And if it does not have the capacity for reproduction, where does it go from there? In contrast, the Biblical account of creation indicates from the very beginning that God created all living things with the ability to reproduce (Genesis 1:11-12, 22, 25, and 28). I see reproduction as yet another miraculous facet of creation that bears testimony to the awesome power and wisdom of our God.

Of Ants and Aphids

Whenever I stroll through the prairie I have a special interest in checking out the milkweed population. Originally this was due to my ongoing fascination with the monarch butterfly, but over time, my fascination with milkweeds has taken on a life of its own. They typically host a very interesting assortment of colorful characters -- insects of various types sporting bright colors to advertise their toxicity after feeding on milkweed. However, there are also milkweed plants devoid of most of the more usual creatures found on the plant and instead evidencing an active patrol of black ants. Invariably upon closer inspection of these plants, one will find a colony of bright yellow oleander aphids somewhere near the top (more tender) part of the plant, attended by one or more ant guards. It is possible to find colonies of these aphids without the ants, but with a resident ant patrol, their quality of living is greatly enhanced. The aphids have many mortal enemies-- lacewing larvae, ladybug nymphs and adults, and aphid wasps to name a few, and the aphids themselves are defenseless apart from their toxicity from feeding on milkweed which deters some predators, but not, for example, the ones mentioned above. So when they're tended by ants, life is good. The ants post a guard around the aphids and then patrol the plant for invaders, killing them or driving them off. In addition, at least one research study has found that ants will remove diseased aphids from the closely packed "herd" in order to prevent the spread of disease. In return for all this care, the ants enjoy the sweet "honeydew" which the aphids secrete as they process the sap they suck from the plants.

I find such mutually beneficial relationships, of which there are seemingly countless examples to be found in creation, fascinating. Although both the ants and the aphids can and do exist independently of each other as well, there are many cases where its difficult or impossible to imagine the one species surviving without the other (the yucca plant and yucca moth are a classic example). While I know there are explanations put forth for such symbiotic relationships in evolutionary texts, I see such harmonies as yet another testament to the creative and intricate design of a world created by an infinite and all-wise creator.

Extravagance

In this picture, taken at a local prairie, there are at least eight different types of flowers all in bloom at the same time (click it to see a larger version -- how many different kinds can you find?). I find this extravagant. And of course the flowers catch our attention, but there are probably dozens of other plant species, several kinds of small animals and thousands of species of insects, spiders and other invertebrates hidden in the few square yards captured in this picture. It seems that when God created, He wasn't content with "just enough" and He didn't stop with "plenty"-- creation is overflowing with the superabundance of His creativity and delight!

I remember a Far Side cartoon entitled something like "God creates the snake" which depicted God rolling out long strands of play-doh as any preschooler would and exclaiming "Oooo. These are easy!" While there's a lot in the cartoon we might take issue with if we took the cartoonist's view seriously, I'm convinced that God thorougly enjoyed the process of creation and delighted in the rich diversity and myraids of variations in the plants and creatures He created. In a 2005 article entitled "Somewhere Out There, Millions of Species Await Discovery," Tina Butler writes that the current number of identified species in all kingdoms comes to about 1.75 million but that 15-20,000 new species of animals alone are discovered every year and that the UN Global Diversity Assessment estimates that there may be as many as 13.6 million species out there! If these estimates are anywhere near accurate, not only do we "not know the half of it," we don't even know a fifth of it!

So why this extravagance? I find it difficult to imagine such extravagance being the product of a grim, harsh survival of the fittest kind of process. I believe it's yet another expression of God's glory in His creation-- a demonstration of His creativity, power and, for lack of a better word, completeness. He doesn't do things partway: "Well, here are three different types of flower for the prairie environment -- that ought to do it!"

And it's a gift. We don't live in a boring world. Imagine having to tell your children, "Sorry, honey, there really isn't anything new left to discover..." We are apparently only scratching the surface (and of course, that's not even counting how much we don't know about the species we do "know"!)

New Life

Today is Easter Sunday, the celebration of the resurrection of Christ. Countless sermons preached today no doubt drew the inevitable parallel between the promise of new life offered by the resurrection and the emergence of new life so abundantly manifest in this season of spring. The co-occurence of the resurrection of Christ with the beginning of spring is, I am confident, more than just a happy coincidence.*

A major reason for this assertion is the fact that the timing of the Jewish Passover celebration, which set the stage for the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, is tied into the historic events that it commemorates -- the deliverance of the Jewish nation from Egypt under the leadership of Moses (Exodus 12:42). It is abundantly clear from the narrative in Exodus that the this event was entirely dependent upon the intervention of God-- from the preservation and preparation of Moses to lead His people to the ten plagues which led to the end of their bondage. The timing of the Passover events and its subsequent commemoration, therefore, was in the hands of God and He, in His infinite wisdom, saw fit to bring this to pass in the spring.

The Passover celebration was not just the historic context for the arrest, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus (e.g. Matthew 26:2), but Christians from the time of Christ see in it deep symbolic significance foreshadowing its fulfillment in Christ (I Corinthinans 5:7) and view the timing of Christ's death and resurrection during the Passover celebration as further confirmation of the significance of the relationship between the two events. The sacrifice of a spotless lamb to protect those who partake of it and take refuge under its blood from the judgement of God is a clear picture of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, the one John the Baptist called "the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world" (John 1:29).

But I will go one step further. There are those, perhaps, who would explain the celebration of Easter as the result of the hope engendered by spring. However, for me it is quite reasonable to believe rather that from the creation of the earth God intended spring to engender the hope of new life as a witness to the resurrection to come. Peter says that Jesus, the "sinless, spotless Lamb of God," was chosen "for this purpose long before the world began" and speaks in this context of His resurrection from the dead (I Peter 1:18-21, New Living Translation). This was in God's mind when He created the world, so just as God prepared the way for the events of Easter through the events of the Passover, I believe He designed the whole rhythm of summer-fall-winter-spring as a yearly testimony to the possibility and promise of new life in Christ.

*I do realize that for people in the southern hemisphere, resurrection Sunday falls in the fall, and further, that spring does not occur, to speak of, in the tropics. Still, I will argue that for those in the temperate regions, spring is a powerful display of new life intended to point us to the hope of resurrection.