Tracking Seals
“Lord, you have examined me; you have known me.” - Psalms 139:1
This verse is a verse dripping with awe. The God who created every single atom you will breathe today has scanned your life, even today. The infinite God who made all the beauty of earth already knows every detail of your upcoming day far better than you do.
The God of all Creation is attentive to every circumstance in our lives. He is aware of the tiniest changes in every situation. Have things changed since a year ago? He knows these changes and the new provisions and open doors and miracles that are necessary. Have things changed in the last week? Nothing caught Him by surprise. Has a situation veered in the last hour for good or great or frustration? He’s completely on-board with the new needs.
The harbor seal is a mammal God Himself made. He know his little seal; He designed it and brought it into being.
His harbor seal has quite a cool ability; it can track a fish a football field away by detecting fine movements of water turbulence left by the fish. Could you track a fish after it had already swum a football field away. Not hardly! But God wanted to make sure His little seal gets enough for lunch. How’d he do it? In a pretty clever way.
When God created the whiskers, the vibrissae, of the harbor seal, He had to know something very little, but very important. To adequately pick up minute turbulence of water that a fish left minutes ago, God had to do something ingenious. His little seal turns his whiskers perpendicular to the water turbulence he is tracking! He can actually do that! How wild is that?!
God wrote on little harbor seal’s DNA to apply the code for muscle building in exact dimensions for the movement of each tiny whisker. He also wrote the directions for attaching the tiny whisker muscles to brain-controlled neurons so his brain could move the whiskers in precisely the direction needed. Not only that, but He also had to put in the code the reading ability of the sensors that detect water movement and directions of what to do with the whiskers.
God had to do all this and a lot more for the whiskers of His harbor seal.
Just as God had to know what His cute seal would encounter, God knows the details of the changing circumstances in our lives. We matter to Him, a whole lot more than we realize.
We all have new needs and new desires for our days as they unfold. They are often little by others’ estimations, but really they are not. Anything God is involved in is greatly significant. Tremendous things are born in the most ordinary moments and delightful joy and love reside there.
The aim is to live the day well that is in front of us. God’s actual desire is to help with the needed wisdom for daily words and daily guidance in the little details of our little daily things. To do a day well, we need what only God can add. God can help in ways that transform the little things into significant things.
In the process, God truly wants to help in every relationship we have and move in surprising and significant ways on our behalf and for other’s good in the midst of this day in front of us. God can also bring much richness into relationships today, If we’re not rushed out of letting Him break in to our days in ways that only He can. It’s astonishing how the most ordinary moment can become a gateway into God’s quite wonderful presence and into His powerful working!
When God engineered the superhuman tracking ability for the harbor seal, it wasn’t for the seal; it was for us. It’s yet another message that He is abundantly adequate for the variety of needs and desires that we have–and that He can do it in playful and exciting ways.
He has searched me and known me.
He has searched you and known you.