Of Sea Otters and God's Safe Keeping
Weighing between 40 and 100 pounds, the sea otter is the world's smallest (and maybe most adorable) species of marine mammal, while at the same time being the heaviest member of the weasel family.
Sea otters have voracious appetites and relish eating abalone, clams, and other marine species. With their high metabolism, they consume about 25 percent of their weight in food every day.
While there were once around a million sea otters in the North Pacific, aggressive fur-trade hunting in the early 1900s decimated their numbers to just over a thousand worldwide.
Today, after laws were passed to protect them, it is estimated that there are about 106,000 sea otters. However, they are still categorized as endangered.
What made the pelts of sea otters so valuable that these creatures were nearly hunted to extinction? Unlike other marine mammals, sea otters don't have a layer of blubber to keep them warm. Instead, they have the densest fur in the animal kingdom, ranging from 250,000 to a million hairs per square inch. By comparison, the average human head contains 100,000 hair follicles.
Whether you're as bald as a baby or you have 250,000 hairs per square inch of scalp, God is lovingly concerned with every detail of your life and that every hair of your head is numbered. Jesus said, "Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father's will. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered" (Matthew 10:29-30, NIV).
In Psalm 139:14 David said, "I praise You becuase I am fearfully and wonderfully made"
Under the Shade of the Tree of Life
The alien-looking baobab tree of Africa, Australia, and Madagascar is sometimes referred to as "the tree of life" because it provides shelter, clothing, food, and water for both man and animal. The bloated trunk of the tree can store thousands of gallons of water in its spongy, fibrous wood during the rainy season, which it then uses during the subsequent dry period.
The tree produces a fruit called "monkey bread," which contains more vitamin C than four oranges. Other parts of the tree are useful as well. For example, the pollen can be used as glue, and the oily, protein-packed seeds can be roasted and eaten. Young leaves can be used like spinach and have lots of calcium, while the fibrous trunk can be woven into rope, cloth, mats, and paper. Even the bark can be used to make tea. Older trees are often hollow, providing living space for animals and humans.
Many baobab trees appear to be ancient, dated many thousands of years old. One aged tree in South Africa measures 72 feet high and 155 feet in circumference.
Did you know the Bible mentions that about six thousand years ago, there was a real tree of life here on earth?
Out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden (Genesis 2:9).
What's more, we're also told we will eat from that tree in heaven!
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God” (Revelation 2:7, NIV).
God IS Our Environment
An observation exists out their on the internet, in various versions, and with various attributions. It is worth repeating, and it goes something like this ...
When God wanted to create fish, He turned to the sea. When God wanted to create trees, He turned to the earth. But when God wanted to create man, He turned to Himself. Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image and in Our likeness.”
If you take a fish out of water, it will die; and when you remove a tree from soil, it will also die. Likewise, when man is disconnected from God, he dies.
Conversely, water without fish is still water, but fish without water are nothing. Soil without trees is still soil, but a tree without soil is nothing. God without man is still God, but man without God is nothing.
It continues,
God IS our natural environment. We were created to live in His presence. We have to be connected to Him because it is only in Him that true life exists. And in plugging into Him, he grants us dominion over all else.
"Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth'” (Genesis 1:26, ESV).
"And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for 'In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we are indeed his offspring’" (Acts 17:26-28, ESV).
"I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:5).