God of the Sparrow, God of the Whale

Humpback whale breaching

O Lord, how manifold are your works!
    In wisdom you have made them all;
    the earth is full of your creatures.
 Yonder is the sea, great and wide,
    creeping things innumerable are there,
    living things both small and great.
 There go the ships,
    and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it.

Psalm 104: 24-26

God of the sparrow
God of the whale
God of the swirling stars
How does the creature say Awe
How does the creature say Praise

God of the Sparrow Hymn Jaroslav J. Vajda

I began my Groundling blog several years ago because I have such a passion for God the Creator and the earthiness of the Incarnation. While Jesus' divinity has always been essential to my understanding of Christianity he ended up with dusty feet and went to secluded places for prayer and even put on a picnic breakfast for his disciples on the shore of Galilee after his death and resurrection.

The challenge for me, other than finding time to keep up with both my Lion Lamb blog and Groundling is that environment news is often bad news in our time. We are so relentlessly destructive as humans and we don't seem to be able to stop ourselves. Even those of us who are aware of the issues around environmental degradation continue habits and lifestyle which contradict our words.

There are still reports which encourage me to "have a care" and to realize that others do as well. And sometimes we are just surprised by the good news.

Recently we heard that there is a humpback whale baby boom in the Antarctic. While this has been widely reported this is from the Big Think piece:

Once hunted to near-extinction, humpback whales living in southern oceans near Antarctica are making a comeback. Some quick facts about humpbacks:

• They live long lives, about the same as humans.
• Treaties were signed to protect them in 1959; otherwise, they probably wouldn’t be here anymore.
• Estimates are that, before the treaties were signed, whale populations were down to less than 10 percent of their pre-whaling levels.
• A new study found there were more pregnant females in a group of humpback whales on the Western Antarctic Peninsula than had previously been noted. In addition, the number of pregnant females has been trending upward for several years.
• Humpback whales are actually benefiting from global warming; there are now 80 more ice-free days per year, which allows them to feed on krill in the open water 

However, that last fact is not likely to last; krill stock is being fished by some countries, and reduced sea ice actually endangers the crustaceans.Some other species rebounding, though not as quickly as the humpback, are fin whales, blue whales, and the southern right whale.



Alan Syliboy Right whale drum

So, there it is. Good news with a caution as well. And of course we've been told that there were no births of North Atlantic Right whales this season, which is a disaster for a species precariously on the brink of extinction.

 I've been fortunate to see both Right whales and Humpbacks on a number of occasions and I pray that we figure out how to live alongside them rather than destroy them.  Psalm 104 invites us to marvel in a world God has created for all creatures.



North Atlantic Right whales, cow and calf