Saturday, October 1, 2016

Variety

"Then God said, 'Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind'; and it was so. God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good." -Genesis 1.24-25

The sun shines on the trees, as birds soar through the sky, and fish swim in the sea. While the creation to this point is amazing, God is not done yet. The sea and air are full, but the land is not, and so God speaks again, and the animals that fill the earth are created. Everything from elephants to ants is formed. Lions and dinosaurs, zebras and cows (that thought makes me smile, there were cows in the Garden of Eden), dogs and elk, squirrels and orangutans (that's one of my favorite words).

The shear number of animals is amazing. Think of all the types of bears there are. Now think about all the big cats. How many species of dogs are there? There are thousands of mammals, and nearly one million insects in the world,* and these numbers don't include the undiscovered or the extinct species. It's estimated that more than five billion species, 99% of all the species that have ever lived, are now extinct.** Think about that, the amazing variety of life on this earth (including plants, birds, and fish, as well as the animals created on day six), is only 1% of God's original creation.

God is infinitely creative, and that creativity results in wondrous variety. God is not boring, He thought up the platypus and the ostrich. He gave elephants trunks and moose antlers. He made horses run and kangaroos jump. With infinite creativity comes wondrous variety, and each species is unique, made according to its own kind. That is how God made the animals, in wondrous variety.

TO GOD ALONE BE THE GLORY!

Peace be with you


*http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0934288.html

**Stearns, Beverly Peterson; Stearns, S. C.; Stearns, Stephen C. (2000). Watching, from the Edge of Extinction. Yale University Press. p. 1921. ISBN 978-0-300-08469-6.

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