I spent the day at the Zoo today with some friends. Forty-something of them, actually. It was a congregation outing. What fun. The Zoo in Jacksonville is arranged so that if one has enough of an imagination, one can pretend you are in Africa. You know, the peaceful yet exciting African trip, like you imagined as a kid when Africa seemed so romantic in those movies of years ago (make that decades.) Jax being semi-tropical and it being close to summer, it rained off and on today. Poured! We ran for and huddled under a grove of trees with a thatched roof covering one might hope to find in a jungle.(We're pretending, remember.) The animals lumbered or hopped or scampered or flew for cover in the downpour as we did. Fifteen minutes later the sun came out and so did we all. We looked at the animals. They mostly ignored us. But we were fascinated.
The apes look just a bit too human for comfort and its easy to see why some could consider that humans came from apes. I held hands with a chimp once. It felt so human it was a bit disconcerting. Seeing them brought to mind a story of my daughter Ellen when in 3rd grade was being taught something about evolution. She indignantly stood up in class, as the teacher later told me, shook her little curly blond head and with her arms folded to make the point announced, "God made man in His own image and God is not an ape!"
Some animals are just strange looking and do make you want to ask, "Lord, whatever were you thinking when you made this one?" One extremely loud and gutsy bird that stood about two feet high with a voice that far exceeded his size ran back and forth with one of our boys like he was playing tag with him. Was it fun for him too? The Giraffes were clearly a close-knit family. One of the giraffes, who is evidently named Naomi (Does she know that?)would eat leaves from your hand. Flamingos are that color pink even when they're not plastic. Lemurs seem to have more fun than anybody. The big cats are majestic. See a male lion and you know why he's king. And you know why Yeshua (Jesus) is the Lion of Judah! We got closer to the Leopards though. Magnificent animals. Regal. Assured. Confident. You don't want to mess with a Leopard. Elephants are....well, big. And baby elephants do hold their mommy's tail with their little trunks, like we hold hands. Little, of course, is a relative term. We are talking elephants here. The snakes? Creepy. Big Anacondias do bring up a picture of one chatting with Eve, while plotting the destruction of the world. You can see where this big dude might be convincing.
We saw the largest rodent in the world. If no one had told me this was a rodent, I might have even though he was cute. Sort of. But that rodent title ruined it. Yuck. He was in the recreated river scene with the ant eater. A vacuum cleaner with fur. It was interesting to see what kinds of animals live side-by-side with other species and pretty much ignore each other, or at least aren't antagonistic. Some are even symbiotic, like birds that ride on hippos or water buffaloes - what they eat keeps the buffaloes clean. Works for them. Then there were the fleet-of-feet (not that they had anywhere to go) elks and ibexes (ibexi?) that appear to be growing shofars on their heads. Some might call them antlers.
All in all, being with the animals revealed anew how vastly creative our God is. I became aware of how He's made more kinds and variations of animals and birds than I was aware of. Some are rarely seen by man unless in captivity. He creates them just for His own pleasure, it would seem. All this takes you outside of yourself. It's so easy to get pigeon-holed (no pun intended, though we might note that there were no pigeons in this zoo, unlike, say, the Philadephia Zoo which is replete with them) in your own mind and emotions so that all that we're aware of is is our own little lives and what concerns us. We city-folk who are largely detached from the world of raw nature and animals and birds of all kinds, except for our domesticated and civilized pets, can easily loose sight of how small our lives are in the vast scheme of God's enormous plan in the earth.
Being in that environment, even imagining we were in the rain forests of Africa or South America and being with what is indigenous there, gave me the sense that this world is so much bigger and more beautiful and more unique than I have been imagining in my tunnel vision and self-focus. God is so big and so in control of all these extraordinary manifestations of His power and beauty. The sounds of the voices calling for their same-species mates are distinguished to the ears of the summoned lovers from all the other voices in the forest. They come together and soon babies of the uniquely beautiful perfect replica of their parents is born. Each new little one looks and acts just like it's parents, without deviation in the patterns and colors of feather or fur, and its instinctual nature.
We saw a big tree full of storks with a plethora of nests. My friend Bonnie said it looked like a high rise apartment building for storks. A loud humming noise came from the tree and then we realized we were hearing baby storks in the nests. Lord knows how many of them. A whole society of storks was happening right there in front of us. Now, I'm pretty sure that God isn't as concerned about their society as He is about ours, at least I think so. You know, that "Aren't you worth more than a sparrow" comment made by the Lord, comes to mind (Matthew 10:31). But God is not just concerned with our problems, with keeping us protected and with helping us, by any means. He's running the universe. And if He can do all that so perfectly and beautifully, then surely He can take care of me. Surely if He can take care of the world, He can even take care of our country.
Taking a trip to the Zoo was a heart and mind expanding journey. God was everywhere. Not that He's not anyway, but sometimes something lifts your chin to Him and your eyes open and you feel yourself smile. That's what happens when your heart awakens again or to something new of God and His goodness. There's such an order to His creation. It's all so beautiful. If that's how beautiful the creation is, how beautiful must the Creator be?!
Along with the animal life the plants and vegetation is beyond beautiful and exceedingly well landscaped to look authentically African or Australian, etc. On our way out, we noticed some richly darkish purple flowers blooming happily next to what can only be called bright chartreuse leaves. You would never paint your living room those colors, but when God does it -- magnifico!
Our trip to the Zoo today brought a deeper rest to my soul. God is so much bigger to me tonight than He was this morning. I am so much more aware of how attentive to detail He is in His commitment to bring beauty and symmetry and order to the world. He is so faithful to keep it all going.And all this continues beside or despite the goings on in mankind and our societal ills. We are part of a vast scenario of beauty, for His pleasure. In Him we ALL live and move, whether we fly, crawl or lumber, hop, swim or slither. In Him we all exist. His diversity awakes within me an awareness that there is so much more available in God to me, and to whomever will look to Him for it, than I have partaken of, or trusted Him for. His evident Lordship over it all in its order and beauty brings me to a new awareness of His glory and His beauty all around us. It's not just in the zoo.
