Spiritual Lessons from Biology

It was a late afternoon in the parasitology lab.  i was tired and just wanted to go home.  We had been there for hours, in a cramped lab that smelled like body odor and swamp.  Counting tiny amphipods by a meager red light was bad enough in and of itself without the fact that we weren't getting the data we'd hoped for.  My supervisor, Charles, fished something out of one of the tanks.  "Check it out!" he said, holding it up.  A dragonfly nymph had climbed up on one of the exposed twigs.  She was slowly changing shape.  Her head flattened out, her eyes changed as my own watched unblinkingly.  Her thorax thickened, and her abdomen thinned.   Slowly, four pencil tips emerged from her back.  The wings grew out, turning from cobalt to glass.  Slowly, colors appeared.  it was magic.   What did it feel like, having dry skin for the first time?   What was it like to see the world through a thousand facets?   ...

i am no stranger to the mountains.   When i am back at my home base in Colorado i  try to hike in the Rockies once per week.   Even though i have been in this region on and off since the age of 6, i am constantly amazed at how many new plants and animals i encounter on my explorations.   One day I was hiking with my dear friend Bekah.   i  lost her along the trail and turned back to see where she’d gone.   There she was, crouched down by the grass, taking a picture of something.   I approached slowly, trying to not scare away whatever she'd found.   Here is what we saw: A Rainbow Grasshopper!   Those extravagant colors were a secret gem in a world of brown and green.   It looked as if a miniaturist had painted it.  i had no idea such a beautiful grasshopper existed, let alone lived in Colorado.   We both crouched in the grass, watching it, in stunned silence.   I was reminded that day of how much God ca...