The Tiny Bird

If you can, I’d recommend you go check out this Youtube video.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-iFgDK_D5s&index=39&list=WL

Essentially, this gentleman rescues animals. It appears that he spends his entire free time rescuing animals, in fact, or that it’s his job, because he gets a call from someone who found a tiny birds’ nest in their lawn chairs.

The man finds a tiny pair of eggs, no bigger than the end of your fingernail, in that nest. He turns these eggs faithfully three times a day.


As someone who tried to hatch quail eggs, and then lizard eggs that my leopard geckos laid, I can tell you that kind of dedication is hard! There’s this moment when the man holds the tiny eggs up to the light of his cell phone—


And one of them’s totally empty.


He describes a sense of hope and fear that there might be an embryo in it. Just the panic of knowing this new baby could die! And that hope of seeing that life. When he shines the light on the second egg, and you see the two umbilical veins (that’s what they are in humans, I don’t know in birds), just flashing and pulsing against the translucent shell—

You just have to hold your breath with him. That tiny tiny tiny life.

I feel like that when I see the early term embryos in my patients on ultrasound. That’s your baby. That’s your tiny tiny tiny baby.


Things are more precious for being small. There’s a video with millions of views online of a beautiful model train carved in the graphite lead of a pencil, and we ooh and aaaah over that craftsmanship—are we too stupid to ooh and aah over the craftsmanship of a tiny person, far more complicated and difficult to do by hand?

Is that why the Universe and its God are so big, and we are so tiny in comparison? The tiny blue planet, with its tiny tiny tiny people, carved by the tip of a paperclip into a graphite pen by the giant fingers shown ever so much more powerful by his delicate touch?

I digress.


After turning the eggs faithfully three times a day for several days, one of the babies hatches, and the gentleman must feed the baby every ten minutes! He arrives ten minutes late for one feeding, and the baby gets all gooey and limp and doesn’t move and open that big old mouth the way it did before. This thing hangs on to life by a minute-by-minute thread.

He has to feed it on the tip of a paperclip.

Just watching that feeding scene is so incredibly stressful. Oh--oh—the bug keeps falling off! His giant mits, no, his fingertips dwarf the baby’s entire body. The bald thing can’t even keep its head up on that little stick-neck—a stick-neck like the size of the letter “I” on my screen! It keeps missing the food, and he keeps missing its mouth…agh!

So just take a moment with me to see more than we see. Just marvel at the wonder of such a tiny animal—and its parents, perfectly equipped to feed it every ten minutes with just the right barfed up nutrient sludge so it ISN'T crazy hard and clumsy!

And then the wonder that there exist these creatures called humans that would care to spend every ten minutes feeding something that isn't their DNA, with no obvious evolutionary benefit to their direct seed (although I would imagine that compassion has a large-scale evolutionary benefit for the planet as a whole)--just--it's just awesome!

It makes me freaking impressed with God, with the intense attention to detail in this Universe. "If even a sparrow falls to the ground, your Heavenly Father knows it...and are you not worth much more than sparrows?"

Granted, this wasn’t a mind-blowingly original prometheus study. I just hope that taking a moment to meditate with me brings you a bit of joy. If it doesn’t, I want to invite you to try to set up an aquaponics system. For real. That, or try to keep alive a baby bird—do something with nature that forces you to see not the individual, but the system. You see, when you blindly look at an individual organism (without truly studying the microbiology behind it, and then the chemistry and physics behind that) you miss the entire point of the organism. If the bird parents didn’t know how to feed the baby—something reptiles don’t do well—it would die before moving on to the next level of natural selection. Setting up a self-sustaining system, like an aquaponics system, takes an incredible amount of foresight, of care, of attention, and once you’ve done that (and failed a couple times) you see the connections between these things in an entirely new way. Pantheists are right, you know, in that we are all connected. We aren’t all God anymore than my aquaponics system is all me, but it is intricately interconnected to me, to itself, to my neighborhood, even (the high nitrates in my stupid city water killing my fish certainly prove that). I don’t know how to make this clear. I don’t know how to show the miracle of our every day breathing, of the every day nitrate cycle, of the carbon cycle, of the very natural process of cellular respiration interconnected with the macro systems of ecology—we take this all for granted so much until we try to create it ourselves!


Create it yourself. Build a universe. Set up a complicated aquarium. Fail once or twice, and get frustrated, and then in that moment, sit yourself down on the ground, and repeat:


"If even a sparrow falls to the ground, your Heavenly Father knows it...and are you not worth much more than sparrows?"


That is the core of the Prometheus Studies. The wonder of Prometheus, the ancient god before Zeus, and the grand cold ancient Universe that needs nothing to do with you—and then this strange fact that Prometheus would care to bring you fire.




Happy studies, my friend. I hope that as you open your eyes and close this book, the whole world becomes your love letter from the divine.

Poseidon...and My Prometheus

Mighty Poseidon, rising above the waves, trident flashing in the lightning and muscles rippling in silhouette against the red sky--the Greeks told of three brothers, Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon who divvied up creation, and this Water-God almost has a moral "middle" position, since Hades/death is traditionally bad and Zeus is good. Of course, you should know that Zeus is not good--he's a human-hating rapist jerkwad--but that's besides the point. The point, right now, is the story of the water-bending master, saved at birth by his mother from becoming the devouring delight of Cronus.

Cronus wanted to eat Poseidon, but Rhea, his mother, swapped him out for a colt and hid him among a flock of sheep. Cronus ate the colt, thinking she'd given birth to it, and Poseidon survived to become the Earth-shaker and Tsunami-maker of the Greek pantheon. As an adult, Poseidon spent most of his life punishing mortals who'd either cheated him (like the king of Troy, who got a multi-headed sea monster in return for refusing to pay Poseidon for the walls the god built) or simply ignored him (like the Athenians, who chose Athena as their patron god instead of Poseidon, who in return flooded them). When he wasn't punishing people, he was sleeping with his male or female lovers.

Yet despite Poseidon's sordid story, there's something so charming, thrilling, terrifying about the sea that the ancient Greeks flocked to worship and honor its patron god. A man-shaped being who can calm the sea--

Wait, I've heard this before. But my man-shaped being who calms the sea doesn't just take the shape of a man--he is a man. He, too, has many lovers, but lovers of his soul, bonded at heart and united with him in faith. He, too, was saved from the ravages of time (Cron means time), for his body never saw decay, and at birth all the best-laid plans of men couldn't kill him--but instead of sacrificing a colt to save him among the sheep, his mother saw him lay down his life as a sacrificial lamb to save the world.

This is my Jesus, who calms the sea. When he stands, hands outstretched, to order about the sea--the scariest part of all Jewish history, the terrible dark force of water and Leviathans and nature so frightening that Revelation comforts Jews by saying "there will be no more sea" in the new heaven and new earth--when my mild-mannered lover orders the sea he is protecting his people. His is gentle power, gentle fingers, the rippling muscles of a carpenter in silhouette against the stormy sky while the disciples panic in the boat besides him. "A bruised reed he will not break"--he is like the Ying in Daoist ideology, the gentle river that bends around the mountain, submits meekly, washes feet, and yet conquers the world and wears away rock. My sea-god is kind, and what Poseidon's tale teaches me, by example, is the sublime attraction and power of my Messiah's gentleness and, if I will follow in his footsteps, my own.

Teach me, Jesus, to calm the winds and waves with love like you do.

Vector Physics and Self-Determination

You know the whole "don't make plans because God's gonna change them" thing? I hate it when people say that to my dreams or when they excuse their past inability to try with a "God closed that door." All they're really saying is that fate and destiny is inevitable, so we really shouldn't try to rock the boat, and our failures aren't our own responsibilities.

Well earthlings, I am here to rock the boat.

Gladys Aylward had merely heard about China, but she spent all her time slaving to earn enough to get there. She didn't believe God was "changing" the plan for her or "closing a door" when she found herself in Russia with no train forward. And thousands of orphans were glad she didn't. Can you imagine if she had been a modern American Christian? "I wanted to be a missionary to China, but God closed that door." Amy Carmicheal broke British Law in India and went through closed temple doors to kidnap the young temple slaves. Unloved orphans received homes and young girls were saved from the unspeakable. I'm sure they were glad Amy didn't give a rat's tail about 'closed doors.'

Sometimes God does close doors. But not getting into a certain school, not having money or transportation, your family saying 'no,' where a mission organization wants you, violence, what your church says, what your government says--all these things are not closed doors. Breaking a promise or throwing away a dream for an inconvenience or a calling--which for most Christians is just a feeling that you'll like something else better--is not God's closed door. It's weakness. Break down that door, soldiers!*

Let me illustrate with a common vector physics problem.

This is a river                         

__D_*\*/*____________ _B_/\_boatman's house__________Z_

<--------------   <------------ The river's got a strong current (Vector C)

____________________A<--->_this is the boatman's boat________

                         
      The boatman wants to get to his house. Which way should he go?

You may think he should aim straight for his house.  But physicists will often ask their students to calculate by vectors. And when you add the Vector line from AB together with Vector C, and you find the line that's Vector AD. The boatman would end up at Point D! That's not his house! There are spikey things there!

That's how it is often if we follow the most obvious (and easiest) plan. We end up somewhere entirely wrong. And sometimes that's what God wanted, and he'll make us drag our boat up the river bank back to point B to teach us something important along the way. But say I want to get to point B, and I trust God to get me there in the end--'cuz he gave me the desire to get there! I will keep my eye on point B, even though God asks me to aim for point Z, and the current and my effort will together bring me to point B. God will never tell me just to put my boat on the river and float off into oblivion while people suffer on the riverbanks. Either way, I will get to point B.

Read the promises of Revelations 2:17, 2:25-29, 3:5, 3:11-13, and 3:21. They speak about the one who overcomes, who conquers. This isn't someone who just holds on to their faith, enduring while God tosses them along the rivers of life. This is someone who prays, like Jabez, that God will "expand my territory" 1 Chronicles 4:9-10. Yes, Jabez wants to be kept from pain, but not because he's sitting around waiting for fulfillment of his "calling." He wants protection from pain 'cuz he's goin' out there to cause some!**

So please, people, stop telling us that God might change our plans, that we shouldn't want so badly to marry a certain person or do mission work in a certain place. God knows what he's doing with our dreams and he doesn't need your help: you're honestly just being like the dream killer in the movie Tooth Fairy, and it's really annoying. Tell me instead to love God with such an enduring passion that I will give anything and everything for his kingdom. Tell me to overcome my pride, my financial obstacles, my stubbornness--whatever might stop me from goin' up in flames for his cause. You either feed this fire, or step aside to watch the fireworks. You don't cast doubt on a phoenix.

*When your action will harm someone else--for example, if your mission to China will sacrifice healthcare for your handicapped child--then we can talk about closed doors. But even then, remember that David Livingstone buried two wives and several children on his mission to save Africans from slave traders. If the person affected by your choice is willing and able to sacrifice, then so, too, should you. If not--then sure, you may have a closed door. Then again, William Carey had a wife who went insane because she couldn't handle his mission work in India. He stayed in India anyway, translated the Bible to several languages, and began the movement ending the practice of sati, or widow burning. Was it worth it? He thought so. Women saved from sati thought so. "Whoever does not hate his father and mother for my sake is not worthy of me," Jesus said, not to say that we ought to hate our families, but to say that our love for Him should so far exceed anything else that all other emotions seem base in comparison. A calling should not revolve around what we like or don't like. It should revolve around meeting other peoples' need.

**Please understand this sentence in light of "for our battle is not against flesh and blood..."

How God is like your hypothalamus, revised (why we do and don't suffer)

Someone asked on fb the other day,

"What's so horrible about the possibility of a world without God?" To me, this query is only the aroma, the light fragrance of the deeper question: "what is God?" What attributes of this being make his absence a tragedy? For the God of the Bible does not linger out in space with super-god-powered binoculars, a cosmic voyeur, a scientist observing the experiment he established. He's not even up on a high mountain, like Mount Olympus, coming down every few years to rap a taste with the mortals. He's a lot more like your hypothalamus.

Did you know that your neurons are actually always sending pain signals up to your brain? You aren't writhing in constant agony right now only because your hypothalamus blocks them out. You're completely oblivious to everything except the comparatively rare, more extreme signals your hypothalamus lets through. The God of the Bible (specifically the Holy Spirit of John 16 and 2 Thessalonians 2) is like that: without him, we wallow in the evil we create, drowning in our own terrible decisions and in the pain of the things other people do to us. Not only is he the source of all happiness--without him, we would experience the consequences of everything we and others do to this planet and to each other, but "in his great mercy he has given us life." Hell is what happens when he takes his hand away, and lets us feel the entirety of a world without him (a world in utter sin and destruction). Hell is the removal of our spiritual hypothalamus.

What happens when your hypothalamus, or something else in the pain-train doesn't work, and you don't experience any pain at all? Something like this girl's disorder--you harm yourself over and over and have no idea you're doing it. We often consider suffering in the world as the root problem, but actually, it's the symptom, the warning pangs of the much deeper, spiritual problems that are eating us like a fungus, multiplying like a cancer, day by day within our souls. The mother of the little girl in the link says she wishes nothing more than that her little girl would feel pain, not because she hates her child, but because she loves her and wants her to keep herself safe. When God allows suffering, he allows it for the same reasons your hypothalamus allows it, and for the same reason that mother wishes her daughter knew suffering: so that you avoid harming yourself. God sometimes allows us to suffer the consequences of our sin so that we learn not to destroy ourselves and others by doing evil or stupid things--other times, he shows us generalized, non-specific suffering to make us consider the results of sin in creation, so that we might learn to defend ourselves from it (Luke 13:1-5). God does not allow earthquakes and tornados so we can say, "haha, you're suffering, you must be an especially bad sinner" but so we can protect ourselves from doing evil, for while suffering in the world exists because of sin, not all suffering results directly from sin. (John 9:1-3) Your hypothalamus also allows you to feel pain for things that are not directly unhealthy; likewise, especially for Christians, suffering's often that burn in your muscles as you're getting stronger, those growth itches in your legs that you have at night as you're getting bigger--symptoms of your immortal soul outgrowing this little world we live in. God allows Christians to suffer sometimes that they might become who they were meant to be (James 1:2-4): the humble "gods" of Psalm 2, the glorious overcomers of Revelation 1-7.

"If we let Him - for we can prevent Him, if we choose - He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful; but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said." --C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity


It's a wonderful thing to have a hypothalamus. It's an even greater thing to have the One who made it.