Fixation

I have a creation fixation;
All living things speak to me
of wisdom and goodness,
of beauty and strength;
Indeed of the glory of God.

Goldfinch

A splash of color
amidst the brown of the past;
A cheerful song
that looks to the future.

Stewardship

Yesterday I had the opportunity to walk a walking path at UH St. John Medical Center, Westlake OH and to hike the Brandywine Gorge trail at Cuyahoga Valley National Park. The fall colors were breathtaking in both places. The walking path was an excellent example of man making beauty with the beautiful things God has made. The path wound throughout the space making the longest distance in the area available, but there was beauty at every turn with the shapes and colors of the trees, clearly selected and placed for their visual interest, carefully planned.

In contrast, the trail at the National Park took full advantage of the beauty arranged by God— the trees, the creek, the ravine and the falls... not to mention the birds, the chipmunks and other animals one sees or might see there. Both places had their own glory and demonstrated beautifully two different shapes God-honoring stewardship can take.

Wonder

In a delightful, well-written essay entitled "Wonder Beyond Measure" (I found a slightly different version of this essay available online at https://orionmagazine.org/article/a-case-for-wonder/ -- a beautiful essay-- even if you don't read through the whole thing, at least read the first several paragraphs!),  environmental science professor Christopher Norment describes an experience during a class field survey with a song sparrow nest containing an egg and two new hatchlings.  He goes on to argue that although it cannot be captured in learning objectives or measured by tests, the capacity for wonder is an essential ingredient of life. It's a beautiful piece and I couldn't agree more.

But let us not stop there. Wonder is fulfilled in worship. Worship connects us with our Creator. This is what we were made for. Recognizing the hand of God in the beauty and mystery of life closes the loop. Yes, we can identify, classify, quantify,* but at the end of the day our ultimate need is to celebrate, to sing His praise; to come face to face with the living God. Wonder is a good step down that path.

*I also enjoy identifying, classifying and quantifying. I was explaining to my son yesterday that the difference between plains garter snakes and eastern garter snakes was which scale rows their stripes were on, and he asked, "Dad, who does that? Who counts scales on snakes?!"

Of Kites and Sparrows

Above is a picture which I took today of a Swallow-tailed Kite soaring over Champaign, IL. This is only the seventh documented sighting of a swallow-tailed kite in the State of Illinois for the past 50 years. If you look at a range map you'll see that they inhabit the wetlands of the extreme southeastern United States, so it's a special treat to have one hanging around here for the past week or so. If you know anything about birders, you won't be surprised to know that they've been coming in large numbers, some from great distances here in the midwest, to get this bird on their life lists. When I stopped by to get this picture this afternoon, there were about a dozen birdwatchers with binoculars and cameras with huge lenses watching the kite and hoping it would perch nearby. There have also been news crews hanging around the area in the past week as well.

In contrast, earlier today I was on a weekly Audubon birdwalk in a local park. There were twenty-some birders there for the comradery of birding together and to learn from more experienced birders (personally it's an area I'm growing in when I have the time). On the final tally for the morning there were listed a total of 26 bird species, but there was one species I know was there and suspect everyone in the group saw as well (birders don't miss much) but paid no attention to and did not include on their lists. That was the house sparrow. The house sparrow is one of the most common animal species on the face of the earth, and certainly among the most widespread. It is found on all continents except for Antarctica and is often considered a pest -- you know, the little bird that hops up to you if you're eating at a restaurant patio or outside at the zoo to beg or steal a bit of your bread or french fries or whatever?

Scientists believe that the house sparrow originated in the Middle East*, where it was also not very highly valued if I'm right in assuming it is the sparrow Jesus was talking about when he commented, "Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies?" Think about that -- that's not even a dime a dozen! At that price you could get 25 for a dime. But that wasn't the end of what Jesus had to say. He followed up by saying, "Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows" (Luke 12:6-7).

While we value the rare and unusual, such as the swallow-tailed kite in Champaign, IL, it is an amazing thing to know that God has time, attention and care for the common as well. He cares about sparrows. He cares about individual sparrows. How much more, Jesus asks, does He care about you as the unique individual you are? In fact, Jesus says, God knows how many hairs you have on your head. If He pays attention to that level of detail in your life, how much more does He pay attention to and care about your hopes, your dreams, your fears, your gifts, your abilities, the other details of your life? God knows us each, loves us, and wants what's best for us. How can we not trust Him with full authority over our lives?

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* See Smithsonian's "The Story of the Most Common Bird in the World" for more on this ubiquitous bird.

All Things New!

It's been a while. So long, in fact, that I couldn't remember what I'd last posted when I started cultivating the idea for this post. Interestingly, not only is the image I was thinking of shot the same morning as the one from the last post a year and a half ago, but the thoughts follow on as well. In the last post I was reflecting on our broken world. I came today thinking about God's promise:

“And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new."

Revelation 21:5

Similar to one of my early posts marveling at the complete metamorphosis of butterflies and moths and the picture that presents of God's promise of transformed lives in Christ, I'm enthralled and amazed when I consider the new lives of dragonflies as they emerge from life underwater to ruling the skies.  My words cannot capture the elegance, beauty and grace of an adult dragonfly. On a far grander scale, the Apostle Paul assures us,

“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined
what God has prepared for those who love him.”

I Corinthians 2:9

Just as a dragonfly naiad could have no concept of the life that awaits it in the air one day, from where we are now we cannot begin to fathom the life God ultimately has in store for us when He makes all things new.

Broken World

I recently had the opportunity for a second year to give a series of presentations about the glory of God revealed in His world at a Christian camp in Kentucky. For one of my talks I spoke about the fact that, as Romans 8 puts it, "all creation groans" as a result of sin in the world. One of the campers remarked that she believed the bad things in the world today are God's punishment for our sin. While there are arguably some instances of this type of event recorded in scripture, I think that for the most part the brokenness of our world is simply the natural consequences of humankind's failure to "use only as directed."

What do I mean? I won't pretend to know for sure whether or not spiderwebs trapped freshly emerged dragonflies in the Garden of Eden, but I doubt it.  I am confident however that there were no category 4 hurricanes, destructive earthquakes, brain cancer etc. in the perfect world; that the world described by God in Genesis 1 six times as being "good" and once as being "very good" fully reflected the goodness of God to His satisfaction, and that a world so beautiful, so intricate, so amazingly wonderful in its reflection of the goodness of God would of a necessity be shattered by the act of disobedience we read of in Genesis 3. I like the analogy of a broken mirror: there is still a reflection of the goodness and glory of God in the broken pieces of creation, but it is now fragmentary, and there is much there that does not belong.

I find great joy, however, in the promises of God that what has been broken will be made whole. The creation will once again perfectly reflect the glory and goodness of God. The Bible promises a "new heaven and a new earth" and Isaiah 11 speaks of a healing of creation such that "the wolf and the lamb will live together; the leopard will lie down with the baby goat. The calf and the yearling will be safe with the lion, and a little child will lead them all." And while we who are followers of Christ rightfully rejoice in our personal restoration through His death and resurrection, it is also clear in Colossians 1 that "everything was created through him and for him" and that "through him God reconciled everything to himself" (vv. 16 and 20). God's work of redemption through Christ is intended for all of creation. Yes, as in the Garden, we who were given free will must make the choice to receive His provision-- as He did not violate the free will He gave us there He does not violate it now. We humans will not be saved against our will; thus the clear invitations to repentance and belief throughout scripture. For those who believe though, we too are made new:

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come."

II Corinthians 5:17

God's Interest

I happened upon this box turtle on a stroll with God through Busey Woods and it struck me for the first time-- God's interest in what Adam would call the animals He had created (Gen. 2:19)-- His interest in Adam, His interest in Adam's reaction to what He had made. Amazing! Why does God even care about such things? He is God. He doesn't need Adam's (or our!) thumbs up or thumbs down, yet He invites him into the pleasure of His creative work, and cares about our response. Get out there and enjoy, enjoy, enjoy! God takes pleasure in your enjoyment of His creation!

(from Facebook, originally posted September 25, 2011 at 11:46am)

Fleeting Beauty

The butterfly in this image struck me with the thought that so much of the beauty and things we pursue in this life are fleeting, momentary, "dust in the wind." In fact, in my youth it was my dream to add a tiger swallowtail to my very small butterfly collection. I finally managed to capture one on a cub scout campout. I was elated. Then on the car ride home it blew off the back shelf of the car where I had so carefully placed it and it got destroyed. An early lesson in the temporary nature of the prizes this world has to offer.

“Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be."

Matthew 6:19-21

When Do I Want to be out in the Woods?

When do I want to be out in the woods?
When they're dripping and wet from the dew or a rain
and the sun slants low through the trees.
When the wildflowers have begun to appear and some have started to bloom.

When do I want to be out in the woods?
When it's vibrant and peaceful, full of color and joy,
When the trees clap their hands and the songbirds rejoice,
When life is aflutter all mindless of me as I pass through and watch all amazed.

"Here is the ocean, vast and wide..."

... still more thoughts on Psalm 104

O Lord, what a variety of things you have made!
In wisdom you have made them all.
The earth is full of your creatures.

Here is the ocean, vast and wide,
teeming with life of every kind,
both large and small.

Psalm 104:24-25

I spent a day this week with my two youngest sons at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, and of course could not help thinking about (and talking about) Psalm 104!  32,600 animals there they tell us (I didn't count) and each one unique and amazing, many of them downright unbelievable. You could obviously spend years in a place like that and never soak it all in -- you'd just barely be scratching under the surface (puns intended -- sorry). Moving through the place with my sons (10 and 12) I didn't learn as much as I'd have liked (or move as fast as they would have liked) but I was able to marvel at the creativity and wisdom of our God. I only had my iPhone with me as a camera, but even with my "good" camera, it would have been very hard to begin to do justice to these fantastic and amazing creatures, and their Creator. All I can say is, if you have a good Aquarium near where you live, get out there and prepare to be amazed.  God really covered all the bases.

Awestruck

[I was on a mission and in a hurry, on my way to a dry fall pool to look for marbled salamanders. And then  on the non-descript grassy path through the woods-- by no means in my mind a destination in and of itself, God arrested my attention and interrupted my agenda. Following is my on-the-spot journal entry.]

There are places in life that demand a slower pace and a deeper appreciation. And these places are far more common than we imagine.

You have brought me to a sacred place to behold your beauty, Lord. And to behold it not on my terms, but Yours. The sudden orange inside the wings of a sunlit comma butterfly can take the breath away.

What is my hurry here? If I must hurry, why even come? It is a time to be alone with One I love. A time to be at peace.

I do love You Lord and I want to love You more. I confess before You the hardness of my heart and the busyness of my life. Let me be still and know that You are God. Be exalted in my life, O Lord. Amen.

"The LORD takes pleasure in all He has made!"

... more thoughts on Psalm 104

Psalm 104 gives great insight into God's delight in His creation, the whole psalm being a celebration of the things He has made. Genesis 1, of course, tells us seven times that "God saw that it was good."  This psalm and other passages, however, make it clear that God's delight with His work didn't end abruptly at the end of Genesis 1-- He continues to take pleasure in the things He has made.

I have to go a step further though and say that I am also firmly convinced that God takes pleasure in sharing the things He has made with others who find delight in them and recognize that they are His work. After all, He created us for fellowship with Him and placed us into this world created so magnificently by His hand.  Think about His walks in the Garden with Adam and Eve before sin entered the scene. What must those strolls have been like?! The cooper's hawk above represents one of many encounters I have had with God's creation that I have felt especially blessed to share in, and that I am fully persuaded He has specifically orchestrated for the purpose of allowing me to share in His delight and bringing me to a point of praising Him in my life.

May the glory of the LORD continue forever!
The LORD takes pleasure in all he has made.

Psalm 104:31

Song of Praise

Almighty God Your Praise is Sung
By sandstone cliffs with ferns o'erhung
By babbling brooks as they pass by
By light and shadow in the sky

By cardinals in magnificent red
By vultures as they soar o'erhead
By fish that dart as I come near
By springtime flowers as they appear

By chipmunk, squirrel and tow'ring tree
By creatures much too small to see
By moss and fungus, earthworm too
All these things belong to You

And should it be as all rejoice
That I alone am without voice?
So to You my life I raise,
Please, Lord, hear this song of praise.

Turkey Run State Park
April 2010

"In wisdom you have made them all"

... more thoughts on Psalm 104


This is the middle phrase of Psalm 104:24. I love the simplicity and depth of this assertion and have come to believe that this is the critical Biblical teaching on creation: that the heavens, the earth, the depths of the seas, and all the creatures contained therein bear witness to God's wisdom and power.

I no longer believe that the validity of my faith or of the Bible as the Word of God hinges on the defense of six twenty-four hour days of creation. Based solely on sound principles of Bible interpretation, I no longer believe that Genesis 1 was intended by God or the human author to be understood as a historical narrative. I have written at length explaining this perspective in "Second Thoughts on Six Days" and I invite you to follow that link to prayerfully consider and comment on what I have shared there. Here I will simply take my stand with the Psalmist in affirming, "In wisdom you have made them all."

O LORD, what a variety of things you have made!
In wisdom you have made them all.
The earth is full of your creatures.

Psalm 104:24

"O LORD, what a variety of things you have made!"

... more thoughts on Psalm 104


Estimates of the total number of species on earth range from five to thirty million, of which only approximately two million have been formally described (see How Many Species are There?). Incredible! But I'd like to bring the discussion down a little closer to home-- something I can wrap my head around.

Yes, I'm stuck on salamanders. My home state of Illinois has twenty species of salamanders. I've been out looking for them and reading up on them a bit recently¹ and there's some amazing variety just among the salamanders of Illinois. For example, the salamander pictured above is a redback salamander, but you don't have to be a very astute observer to note that it doesn't have a red back. That's because up to 35% of redback salamanders (and up to 97% in one Illinois county!) lack their red stripe (here's one with the stripe).

But the fun is just beginning. We all know that salamanders are amphibians, like frogs and toads, and that their eggs are laid in water, hatch into tadpole-like "larvae" and later metamorphose into adults, right? Well, yes and no. Redback salamanders along with a few others (the northern slimy salamander is another Illinois salamander with this characteristic) are completely terrestrial. Their eggs are laid on land and their young completely bypass the aquatic tadpole stage. On the other end of the spectrum, hellbenders, mudpuppies and lesser sirens are three Illinois species that are completely aquatic, spending their entire lives in the water breathing through gills. Then just to be different, the eastern newt has a three-part life cycle starting life in the water as most salamanders do, entering a terrestrial lifestyle for a couple of years, and then returning to the water to live out their adult lives.

In my previous post I described an enchanting visit to a temporary woodland pool full of spotted salamanders. Several Illinois species take advantage of these temporary pools for early spring breeding-- the major advantage being that temporary pools have no fish to eat eggs or larvae. However, one Illinois species has a completely different approach. The marbled salamander comes to dry pools in the fall to lay their eggs. The eggs are strategically positioned far enough up the side of the dry pool so that if the water reaches them and causes them to hatch, there is sufficient water there to last until the larvae metamorphose into adults. They actually grow and mature throughout the winter months.

Finally, for something completely different, there is in Illinois, albeit at only one location, a salamander species that is all female. The silvery salamander is one of several salamander species that are essentially all female clones of one another...

O LORD, what a variety of things you have made!
In wisdom you have made them all.
The earth is full of your creatures.

Psalm 104:24

¹My main source for reading about the reptiles and amphibians of Illinois, and the source of most of the facts in this post is the Field Guide to Amphibians and Reptiles of Illinois. I have also been enjoying very much Swampwalker's Journal: A Wetlands Year and highly recommend it. This is where my information about the marbled salamander comes from.

"The earth is full of your creatures."

Psalm 104 is a wonderful Psalm of praise to God focused on the beauty and wonder of His creation. I've had in mind a while to write a series of posts based on Psalm 104, not necessarily "in order." Verse 24 is one of my favorite verses of the Psalm:

O LORD, what a variety of things you have made!
In wisdom you have made them all.
The earth is full of your creatures.

I'll write more about this verse, but for now the final phrase stands out. A couple of nights ago I headed out with a friend into the woods after dark in intermittent early spring showers. We came to a site he knew of-- a couple of days before only a damp depression in the forest floor, but now a shallow pool of rainwater. From afar we could hear the high pitched calls of the Spring Peepers; as we approached, the lower-pitched "chattering" sound of a large chorus of wood frogs. As we stood and swept our flashlights over the water, dozens and dozens of spotted salamanders became visible (photo-- along with a wood frog). And still again as we began searching along the perimeter of the pool, a good number of silvery salamanders. All four of these amphibian species are normally not animals you'd be likely to see, but here they all were in large numbers in a yearly event repeated in temporary woodland pools across N. America. Whether or not we're there to observe them, there they are. Turn a log over, look under a stone-- places we never see teem with fascinating creatures we could never imagine. The earth is full of His creatures.

For more about temporary woodland pools and spring amphibians, see this Environmental Almanac post on the topic.

The Garden

Ah Lord God forgive us. You gave us all we could ever need in Your creation, and yet we wanted more. Not enough to be created in Your image, to know You and walk with You; we wanted to BE You. "You will be like God" Satan had said. A lie: we WERE like You but traded that instead to be like him-- children of rebellion rather than children of God.

You sent Your Son to re-open that door, but we hardened our hearts against You. We crucified Your Son-- and in so doing fulfilled Your plan. You raised Him from the dead and opened the door. Where once there was only death, now there is Life.

I sit in a park surrounded by trees-- huge, beautiful trees three times my age, splendid, magnificent trees-- a glimpse of the garden You made for us, and made us for. It's stately-- it speaks of You and inspires quiet awe. The longer I linger the more I see, the more I hear. Your presence is unmistakable. Oh why were we not satisfied!?

A Prayer of Humility*

O Lord, I do not know
how You flung the stars into space,
Or the time You took
to carve the canyon we call "Grand,"
But this I know: whether in a moment
or spanning millions or billions of years,
You designed and crafted these, and all of life, to be
to the praise of Your majesty.
Amen.


*occasioned by a rethinking of some of my previously held dogmas

Songs in the Night

I have become a connoisseur of sound. Nature sounds to be precise. I'm a visual person, enamored of images and deeply enjoying opportunties to practice nature photography. But in the process of completing the volunteer hours required for my Master Naturalist certification, I have been working with the county forest preserve district doing frog call surveys. These are done after sunset and I find myself spending hours alone after dark in the county forest preserves. There's not a lot to see (though when the moon is nearly full there is a beauty unique to its pale light) but there is plenty to listen to-- sometimes a rich tapestry of sound; sometimes vast stillness with only brief interruptions of sound; sometimes subtle sounds emanating from the darkness. There's the crescendoing chorus of spring peepers or cricket frogs building in intensity and volume only to taper off again for an interlude of silence before starting all over. There's the sharp slap of a beaver's tale on the water warning of my intrusion into their world of night. There's the nearby chattering of two raccoons apparently in some disagreement, the distant hooting of a great horned owl, the snorting and stamping of a herd of deer in the meadow as startling to me as I am to them. As the weather gets warmer the insects increasingly become a part of the symphony of night. They're only getting started now with the whirring of some nearby crickets, the fluttering of a moth when my flashlight is on, the buzzing of a mosquito.

At a time I'm normally home sleeping, there's an awful lot going on in the woods and on the water. Some of the sound is incidental -- the startled deer, the angry raccoons and the buzzing mosquito (indeed, it would be to the mosquito's advantage to approach me more silently!), but much of it is purposeful, in particular, the calling of the frogs. Using sound to attract a mate makes a lot of sense when the attracting is to be done at night (some species will call in the daylight hours as well as after dark, spring peepers and cricket frogs among them, but after sunset is definitely prime time). I marvel at the diversity of the frog and toad calls-- a much greater variety than the stereotyped cartoon-style "ribbit". And I am impressed by how well and how far most of the calls carry, over the water especially, but also across land. In my surveys I have frequently discovered temporary bodies of water I didn't know existed by following the calls of one or more frogs or toads. It's a system of finding a mate beautifully designed for life after dark at the water's edge and just one more small detail attesting to the brilliance and creativity of the Master Designer. "Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!" (Psalm 150:6) Amen I say to that.

My experiences in the woods at night have given me a whole new appreciation for the richness of our audio environment. Please enjoy this sampling of "sound bites" from my wandering in the woods (or hop over to my Frog Blog and Podcast).

Sample Sound Bites:

• the rise and fall of a chorus of spring peepers
  


• a couple of western chorus frogs
  


• intro by crickets, feautred solo by eastern gray tree frog, percussion by cricket frogs, incidental sounds by geese on the lake, a bird in the woods and distant American toads