You alone are the LORD. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, along with all their multitude of stars, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You impart life to them all, and the multitudes of heaven worship you. (Nehemiah 9:6)
Thump, thump, our cat charged across the floor after an imaginary mouse and I couldn’t repress a grin. It was a comic burst of life from an otherwise inert pet.
Thank you, God, for frisky cats. A lot of smiles would disappear from the earth without them.
“Ooh, ahh.” A friend peeled swaddling to reveal her newborn baby. The ruby mouth stretched into a yawn all of one inch across. The elixir of life was doubly concentrated in this tiny infant.
Hallelujah, thank you, God, for babies. We’d be so much less without them.
A spray of water shot from the emerald sea near our boat in Alaska—the exhale of a thirty ton humpback whale. After several breaths, her tail fluke, with a deep vee on the left side, rose then slipped under the surface. The creature returned to a forest of kelp and sardines where she thrives with her calf.
God, you didn’t have to create lifeforms in such wild diversity but you did and it is glorious. Thank you for whales that play beneath the waves. I can’t imagine our oceans empty of those mammal cousins.
On par with God’s incalculable gift of life was his second gift of reclaimed life. His initial invention was too brilliant to let it go after mankind despoiled it. It’s true that nature lies defaced but the heartbeat yet pounds and Jesus has come with a plan for renewal.
My participation in the gift of life doesn’t have to end here. I’m given a window of time to align myself with God’s solution. Cats, new babies, all creation will be remade, very soon. Until then, heaven and earth watch to see if I’ll worship God for his two most mind-boggling gifts—birth and rebirth.
Prayer: Blessed Creator, thank you for the gift of life, and for your plan to reclaim it.