He made the moon to mark the seasons. The sun knows its time for setting. You make darkness, and it is night, when all the beasts of the forest creep about. The young lions roar for their prey, seeking food from their God. When the sun rises, they steal away and lie down in their dens. Man goes out to his work and to his labor until the evening. O Lord, how manifold are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all. The earth is full of Your creatures. Here is the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, living things both great and small. There go the ships and Leviathan, which You formed to play in it. (Verses 19-26)
In March of 2003, Bill and I traveled to the tip of Baja California, Mexico, to go whale watching. There is nothing there but sand and a little brush. The whale watching adventure was a "green" expedition, so everything had to be environmentally safe, including toilets and showers. They used the word shower loosely. We had what looked like enema bags filled with water. These were set in the sun early in the morning in order to gather enough heat from the sun to produce water warm enough to get us sufficiently wet to wash our hair and suds our bodies. If we ran out, we ran out. But, I digress. It had been a dream of mine to go out in the small motor boat and fellowship with Leviathan for years. In March, the mother gray whales appear with their calves and some whale lovemaking also is in order. We were told that many of the mothers had themselves been babies when boats such as ours cruised into the waters with spectators reaching out their hands or setting up their cameras for a moment of connection with these giant sea mammals. Thus, the speculation the mommies were unafraid to push their spawn close to the boat for a bit of human babysitting while they swam free in the waters around us.
Our first trip out was in the morning. "We don't see whales on each of our forays," explained the captain of our eight-man motor boat. "Hopefully we will today." My heart was beating with excitement as we sped out over the dark blue water. Then we saw little geysers spewing from the water and the boat slowed. Up from near the boat rose a gray whale, spy-hopping fewer than ten feet away. Looking with her steady eye at we humans in the boat. Beside her was her calf.
As if on cue, the baby came swimming over to the boat and nudged it with its nose. "If you put your hand into the corner of its mouth, the whale will open its mouth and let you scratch her baleen," instructed the captain. "They love that!"
He didn't have to ask me twice. I leaned over the boat and coaxed the calf to my waiting hand and found the corner of its mouth. The next thing I knew, my entire hand was inside the mouth of a waiting whale who seemed to laugh with joy that I was giving a free sea massage.
Then the mother bumped the boat, scratching herself as if to say, "What about me?" She emerged on the other side. Signaling playtime was over.
Every time we went out to search, we saw whales. Up close. All sixty to eighty feet of them, splashing, diving, spy-hopping, and yes, mating. The massive space that is the ocean makes even them small in comparison. Playing. Living with family. Eating. Sleeping. Traveling from one end of the earth to the other. All in the world over which we travel in ships and planes. In the depths where mountains can be 13,000 feet high. A macrocosm of teeming life. Another world.
Out of the ocean yesterday an entire island sprouted. The earth shook violently in Pakistan and the ocean floor spit up a brand new piece of land. The miracle of the mixing gases in the layers of the earth looking for and finding release as they blow through Earth's crust. Mysterious movements we aren't aware of in a world just beneath our feet.
I just read an article describing the Hubble telescope's searches into what scientists thought were black holes. After leaving the telescope in the same place for eleven days, thinking there would be nothing but blackness recorded there at the end of that time, what was revealed was a depth of number of galaxies amazing in scope. What we thought was only darkness was in reality a window into more galaxies than we could count. There are over one hundred billion galaxies in space, at last count. In an ever expanding cosmos, will we ever discover all of them? There just might be an infinite number. We just don't have the power to see them yet...or never.
It's just too big. This created world. It's ordered and intentional. The moon and sun controlling tides, animal habits and habitats, vegetation and seasons. Oh, our God wants us to look at it and marvel. Wonder at His mind. Glory in His imagination. Joy that we are made in His image, able to reason and reach for what He knows so we can know Him more fully. Not so we can rule God out as Designer, but so we can capture for this world all that the Godhead meant in the beginning, "Let us make man in our own image." And God said when He looked on all He'd made, "It is very good."
In March of 2003, Bill and I traveled to the tip of Baja California, Mexico, to go whale watching. There is nothing there but sand and a little brush. The whale watching adventure was a "green" expedition, so everything had to be environmentally safe, including toilets and showers. They used the word shower loosely. We had what looked like enema bags filled with water. These were set in the sun early in the morning in order to gather enough heat from the sun to produce water warm enough to get us sufficiently wet to wash our hair and suds our bodies. If we ran out, we ran out. But, I digress. It had been a dream of mine to go out in the small motor boat and fellowship with Leviathan for years. In March, the mother gray whales appear with their calves and some whale lovemaking also is in order. We were told that many of the mothers had themselves been babies when boats such as ours cruised into the waters with spectators reaching out their hands or setting up their cameras for a moment of connection with these giant sea mammals. Thus, the speculation the mommies were unafraid to push their spawn close to the boat for a bit of human babysitting while they swam free in the waters around us.
Our first trip out was in the morning. "We don't see whales on each of our forays," explained the captain of our eight-man motor boat. "Hopefully we will today." My heart was beating with excitement as we sped out over the dark blue water. Then we saw little geysers spewing from the water and the boat slowed. Up from near the boat rose a gray whale, spy-hopping fewer than ten feet away. Looking with her steady eye at we humans in the boat. Beside her was her calf.
He didn't have to ask me twice. I leaned over the boat and coaxed the calf to my waiting hand and found the corner of its mouth. The next thing I knew, my entire hand was inside the mouth of a waiting whale who seemed to laugh with joy that I was giving a free sea massage.
Every time we went out to search, we saw whales. Up close. All sixty to eighty feet of them, splashing, diving, spy-hopping, and yes, mating. The massive space that is the ocean makes even them small in comparison. Playing. Living with family. Eating. Sleeping. Traveling from one end of the earth to the other. All in the world over which we travel in ships and planes. In the depths where mountains can be 13,000 feet high. A macrocosm of teeming life. Another world.
Out of the ocean yesterday an entire island sprouted. The earth shook violently in Pakistan and the ocean floor spit up a brand new piece of land. The miracle of the mixing gases in the layers of the earth looking for and finding release as they blow through Earth's crust. Mysterious movements we aren't aware of in a world just beneath our feet.
I just read an article describing the Hubble telescope's searches into what scientists thought were black holes. After leaving the telescope in the same place for eleven days, thinking there would be nothing but blackness recorded there at the end of that time, what was revealed was a depth of number of galaxies amazing in scope. What we thought was only darkness was in reality a window into more galaxies than we could count. There are over one hundred billion galaxies in space, at last count. In an ever expanding cosmos, will we ever discover all of them? There just might be an infinite number. We just don't have the power to see them yet...or never.
It's just too big. This created world. It's ordered and intentional. The moon and sun controlling tides, animal habits and habitats, vegetation and seasons. Oh, our God wants us to look at it and marvel. Wonder at His mind. Glory in His imagination. Joy that we are made in His image, able to reason and reach for what He knows so we can know Him more fully. Not so we can rule God out as Designer, but so we can capture for this world all that the Godhead meant in the beginning, "Let us make man in our own image." And God said when He looked on all He'd made, "It is very good."
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