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.