SEEING HEAT, TASTING SMELLS
1 Corinthians 13:12
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
The rattlesnake has little pits in its face, under its eyes. Amazingly, these pits are a second pair of eyes that actually see what eyes cannot see! Researchers have learned that there is a membrane stretched over the back of each pit, a thousandth of an inch thick, which is crammed with sensors which pick up the infrared radiation, or heat, given off by all warm-blooded creatures. These sensors are hooked up to a second vision center in the brain so that the rattlesnake can see an image of its warm-blooded victim even in complete darkness.
When a snake flicks its tongue out, it is smelling you. Its tongue picks up scent molecules in the air, then rubs the molecules off on a sense organ in the roof of its mouth. This provides it with a scent of whatever the molecules came from. You may be amazed to learn that human beings are equipped with the same organ before birth!
There is so much of reality to sense, and our ability to sense it all is very small. This is why it is nothing but human pride to say that if we have not seen something for ourselves, it cannot exist. But the faith that God gives allows us to see His workings which are usually otherwise invisible to us.
Let God’s Word sharpen your senses.
Dear Father in heaven, help me to have more clear sight so that I can see, by the faith You provide, those things that I would not otherwise know about. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Photo: Forked tongue of a Carpet Python. Courtesy of LiquidGhoul. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
1 Corinthians 13:12
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
The rattlesnake has little pits in its face, under its eyes. Amazingly, these pits are a second pair of eyes that actually see what eyes cannot see! Researchers have learned that there is a membrane stretched over the back of each pit, a thousandth of an inch thick, which is crammed with sensors which pick up the infrared radiation, or heat, given off by all warm-blooded creatures. These sensors are hooked up to a second vision center in the brain so that the rattlesnake can see an image of its warm-blooded victim even in complete darkness.
When a snake flicks its tongue out, it is smelling you. Its tongue picks up scent molecules in the air, then rubs the molecules off on a sense organ in the roof of its mouth. This provides it with a scent of whatever the molecules came from. You may be amazed to learn that human beings are equipped with the same organ before birth!
There is so much of reality to sense, and our ability to sense it all is very small. This is why it is nothing but human pride to say that if we have not seen something for ourselves, it cannot exist. But the faith that God gives allows us to see His workings which are usually otherwise invisible to us.
Let God’s Word sharpen your senses.
Dear Father in heaven, help me to have more clear sight so that I can see, by the faith You provide, those things that I would not otherwise know about. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Photo: Forked tongue of a Carpet Python. Courtesy of LiquidGhoul. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
HUNTING WITH THE CHEETAH
Joel 1:6
“For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth [are] the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a great lion.”
Just recently we spoke about the Cheetah. No other cat has such speed, and as a result, the cheetah’s tactics are unique, especially since the cheetah will not eat anything it has not freshly killed.
Cheetahs hunt alone, during the day, on the grassy plains. This means that its prey usually sees it coming. The hungry cheetah carefully stalks its prey, hoping not to be noticed until it is 600 to 900 feet away from the victim. At that point, the cheetah breaks into a flat-out chase, reaching speeds of up to 70 miles per hour. By the time the cheetah catches up to his prey, he seldom has enough strength left to kill anything very large.
About the largest animal the cheetah will hunt is the 40-pound Thomson’s gazelle. And after killing an animal this size, the cheetah will be panting for half an hour before he is able to eat. During this time, any lion or hyena which happens along may steal the hapless cheetah’s hard-earned meal. In one study in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park, researchers found that lions hijacked 12 percent of the cheetah’s meals.
The incredible variety of special abilities the Creator has given to different creatures not only shows us how great His imagination is, but also His care for the balance in nature.
Dear Heavenly Father, You have personally given each creature special gifts and personal love. I pray that You would help me to more clearly understand and better use the gifts You have given me. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Photo: Though cheetahs are social animals, they hunt alone. Courtesy of Filip Lachowski. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
Joel 1:6
“For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth [are] the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a great lion.”
Just recently we spoke about the Cheetah. No other cat has such speed, and as a result, the cheetah’s tactics are unique, especially since the cheetah will not eat anything it has not freshly killed.
Cheetahs hunt alone, during the day, on the grassy plains. This means that its prey usually sees it coming. The hungry cheetah carefully stalks its prey, hoping not to be noticed until it is 600 to 900 feet away from the victim. At that point, the cheetah breaks into a flat-out chase, reaching speeds of up to 70 miles per hour. By the time the cheetah catches up to his prey, he seldom has enough strength left to kill anything very large.
About the largest animal the cheetah will hunt is the 40-pound Thomson’s gazelle. And after killing an animal this size, the cheetah will be panting for half an hour before he is able to eat. During this time, any lion or hyena which happens along may steal the hapless cheetah’s hard-earned meal. In one study in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park, researchers found that lions hijacked 12 percent of the cheetah’s meals.
The incredible variety of special abilities the Creator has given to different creatures not only shows us how great His imagination is, but also His care for the balance in nature.
Dear Heavenly Father, You have personally given each creature special gifts and personal love. I pray that You would help me to more clearly understand and better use the gifts You have given me. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Photo: Though cheetahs are social animals, they hunt alone. Courtesy of Filip Lachowski. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
THE FRIENDLY CHEETAH
Daniel 6:27
“He delivereth and rescueth, and he worketh signs and wonders in heaven and in earth, who hath delivered Daniel from the power of the lions.”
Today, we want to tell you more about the cheetah. From a human standpoint, Daniel would have been a whole lot safer if he had been thrown into a den of cheetahs rather than a den of lions.
The truth is, cheetahs are the least aggressive of the big cats and offer virtually no threat to man at all. In their native Africa, bushmen actually chase cheetahs away from their kills and steal the fruit of the cheetah’s hard-won labor. Man has been taming cheetahs and leading them on leashes for thousands of years.
Recently, a naturalist returned a hand-raised cheetah to the African wilds. The naturalist had to train the cheetah to hunt, just as its mother would have done. In the process, the cheetah repeatedly chased antelopes to its human friend, and waited to see what it was supposed to do with them.
The cheetah is a unique variation on the cat theme that shows how God’s creativity can take many forms. When we study His creation, we are wise if we remember that, compared to God, we have hardly any imagination. Therefore, we could never decide what could be and what could not be.
As we learn about the world God has created, we do best when we study what God has done, without letting our ideas of what is possible and impossible cloud our thinking.
Dear Father in heaven, help me to have a faith in Your working like Daniel had, a faith which is not limited by my own thinking of what You can do to help me. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Photo: Close-up of cheetah cub. Courtesy of Muhammad Mahdi Karim. Licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2.
NOBEL LAUREATE SUGGESTS SPIRIT!
Genesis 2:7
“And the LORD God formed man [of] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
Many scientists have rejected the idea that man has a spirit – that we are no more than simply material organisms. After all, they reason, man evolved, but a non-material thing like a spirit cannot evolve.
Evolution is completely materialistic in its outlook. Nineteenth-century promoters of evolution admitted that they devised the idea of naturalistic evolution to get rid of the idea of a non-material, spiritual dimension.
That’s why it is noteworthy that, in 1983, Nobel prize-winning scientist George Wald announced to the scientific community that he had found evidence of a non-material aspect to life. Wald called this non-material part of life consciousness and concluded that our consciousness exists outside of space and time.
Evolutionary scientists quickly treated Wald as a heretic. Suddenly evolutionists attacked one of their own with the same ferocity they had previously reserved for creationists. They offered no argument against Dr. Wald’s science – they simply refused to even look at his evidence because they just knew that he had the wrong conclusion.
The lesson we learn from this is that evolution is a faith – a faith that competes with Christianity. Another lesson is that there is real scientific evidence that supports the Christian view of life and reality.
Dear Father in heaven, I thank You that You have revealed the truth about who and what we are in Scripture. Help me not to be intimidated by those who promote a competing faith as science. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Photo: George Wald (1906-1997).
Genesis 2:7
“And the LORD God formed man [of] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
Many scientists have rejected the idea that man has a spirit – that we are no more than simply material organisms. After all, they reason, man evolved, but a non-material thing like a spirit cannot evolve.
Evolution is completely materialistic in its outlook. Nineteenth-century promoters of evolution admitted that they devised the idea of naturalistic evolution to get rid of the idea of a non-material, spiritual dimension.
That’s why it is noteworthy that, in 1983, Nobel prize-winning scientist George Wald announced to the scientific community that he had found evidence of a non-material aspect to life. Wald called this non-material part of life consciousness and concluded that our consciousness exists outside of space and time.
Evolutionary scientists quickly treated Wald as a heretic. Suddenly evolutionists attacked one of their own with the same ferocity they had previously reserved for creationists. They offered no argument against Dr. Wald’s science – they simply refused to even look at his evidence because they just knew that he had the wrong conclusion.
The lesson we learn from this is that evolution is a faith – a faith that competes with Christianity. Another lesson is that there is real scientific evidence that supports the Christian view of life and reality.
Dear Father in heaven, I thank You that You have revealed the truth about who and what we are in Scripture. Help me not to be intimidated by those who promote a competing faith as science. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Photo: George Wald (1906-1997).
THE SECRET OF BEE BREAD
Numbers 13:27
“And they told him, and said, We came unto the land whither thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey; and this [is] the fruit of it.”
Bee bread is a highly nutritional derivative, made from pollen by bees. Scientists have understood for some time that worker bees who have just emerged from the comb must eat bee bread so that their glands produce food for the queen and developing larvae. However, older worker bees get by on honey alone. So scientists suspected that bee bread must have a higher nutritional value than honey.
Now, after painstaking work, researchers have learned how bee bread is made. Even as bees collect the pollen, they begin to work on the recipe. They add secretions from special glands, as well as microorganisms that produce enzymes which release a number of important nutrients from the pollen. Other microbes are added to produce antibiotics and fatty acids to prevent spoilage. At the same time, unwanted microbes are removed, and the bees add honey or nectar to the bread to get it to stick together.
The bees’ recipe for bee bread involves a highly sophisticated knowledge of microbiology, nutritional chemistry and biochemistry in general. Modern science, therefore, absolutely requires us to reject the idea that bees and their culture evolved by blind chance and ignorant natural forces.
Only a perfect Creator could have made these wonderful creatures and taught them how to make bee bread!
Dear Father, I thank You for the gift of honey and for creating clear indications of Your work as Creator that cannot be denied. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Photo: Western honey bee collecting pollen.
Numbers 13:27
“And they told him, and said, We came unto the land whither thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey; and this [is] the fruit of it.”
Bee bread is a highly nutritional derivative, made from pollen by bees. Scientists have understood for some time that worker bees who have just emerged from the comb must eat bee bread so that their glands produce food for the queen and developing larvae. However, older worker bees get by on honey alone. So scientists suspected that bee bread must have a higher nutritional value than honey.
Now, after painstaking work, researchers have learned how bee bread is made. Even as bees collect the pollen, they begin to work on the recipe. They add secretions from special glands, as well as microorganisms that produce enzymes which release a number of important nutrients from the pollen. Other microbes are added to produce antibiotics and fatty acids to prevent spoilage. At the same time, unwanted microbes are removed, and the bees add honey or nectar to the bread to get it to stick together.
The bees’ recipe for bee bread involves a highly sophisticated knowledge of microbiology, nutritional chemistry and biochemistry in general. Modern science, therefore, absolutely requires us to reject the idea that bees and their culture evolved by blind chance and ignorant natural forces.
Only a perfect Creator could have made these wonderful creatures and taught them how to make bee bread!
Dear Father, I thank You for the gift of honey and for creating clear indications of Your work as Creator that cannot be denied. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Photo: Western honey bee collecting pollen.
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