The Biology of Praise
Jul 18, 08:27 AM
I’m not a biologist, of course, not even close. So I’m not sure why I found an article on the worldwide surge in the discovery of new species—some arcane and far-flung—well, interesting.
Part of my fascination with the Smithsonian July/August issue (with a theme, "Forty things you need to know about the next 40 years") had to do, I suppose, with the odd colorfulness of it all. Like what I saw in the photo of the mottled orangey-red sea spider in Antarctica. Or a Satomi’s pygmy seahorse in Indonesia. There was the tiny limestone leaf warbler from Laos. Some, like the kipunji monkey in Tanzania’s highlands, with its black muzzle and mane of reddish, grayish brown whiskers, lives only in that one corner of East Africa.
But I also think what struck me was not the biology as much as the explosion of awareness of our world. What I read and the photos I studied points to a world of yet-undiscovered possibilities. Confounding conventional wisdom, the article said, "big, colorful, even spectacular new species seem to be turning up everywhere these days." Scientists figure that the world contains between 10 and 50 million different plant and animal species—from microbes to mammals, from low-lying plants to towering trees—to say nothing of the sheer proliferation of bugs. Naturalists estimate they have so far catalogued only about 2 million. That’s a lot of rich, wild diversity. And we’ve just begun to scrutinize it. And then there’s this: The sheer vastness of our universe of a world on earth only comprises a tiny bit of the whole cosmos.
That’s something of an explanation, I guess. But I think what fascinates me the most is how such realities apply to even larger possibilities. If this is the stunningly surprising nature of Creation, what about the One who created all?
I’m trying today to ponder the sense of the inexhaustible riches of God. This God of ineffable, inestimable, unfathomable glories. The architecture of his heavenly realm, the dimensions of his kindness, the indefinable depths of his wonders. Something in me senses that there is more than I can ever comprehend.
But I can begin to ponder it. And when it comes to the One I will only ever partly, piecemeal, failingly, come to know—remember him to adore.