How countless are your works, O Lord.
The earth abounds with your creatures!
(Psalm 104:24)
A dog can determine the direction of a set of footprints after sniffing just five of them. Scallops have 200 eyes, each one the color of a neon blueberry. A chicken will starve to death if you cover its right eye because the left eye only detects distant motion.
In the book, An Immense World, author Ed Yong takes readers through jungles, rivers, deserts and barnyards spotlighting animals with incredible instincts and abilities: scorpions that can feel the vibration of ants walking on sand; crickets that can sense the breeze produced by a charging spider; snow flies that consider 6˚ Fahrenheit a pleasant temperature.
(Where was this guy when I was a kid reading about Noah’s ocean cruise?)
If you happen to be a grandparent, babysitter or an uncle scouting for material to astonish the children in your life, this book is an excellent resource. Inside its pages you’ll learn about spiders with wrap-around vision and squids with eyes the size of volley balls. You’ll discover that elephants see in color and armadillos can see in the dark.
An Immense World places the reader deep within the animal kingdom. It also lifted this reader up to God’s:
By your judgment all creatures exist.
They are all your servants.
(Ps 119:91)
Paying attention to the world around you fosters attention to the Spirit within you.
An expanded prayer life awaits you!
It can start by simply taking note of animals in your neighborhood, livestock grazing in a roadside pasture and even those pesky insects on your own front porch.