Daily Devotional - January 13

Biblical Accuracy

Have you ever tried to count the clouds? At any given moment, about one half of the earth’s surface is covered with clouds. These clouds are either made of water droplets or ice crystals. Of the three types, the cumulus or “cotton ball” clouds last from 5-40 minutes. The number of clouds in the sky is constantly changing - yet at every moment of time, God knows the number of clouds!

God asks Job a rhetorical question in Job 38:37, “Who has the wisdom to count the clouds?” By implication, God is telling us that He is capable of exactly that! Just as God knows the number of hairs on our head; He knows the number of clouds in the sky at a given moment. God is all-knowing concerning his creation. He also knows every desire of your heart, every thought in your mind, every temptation you face, and every challenge you have to overcome. So take a moment, look up into the sky, marvel, and trust your Maker.

Who has the wisdom to count the clouds?

~ Job 38:37

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

Daily Devotional - January 12

Biology

One of the weirdest creatures in the ocean is the sea cucumber, which looks like a cucumber with small spines. Some sea cucumbers eat sand with other small pieces of food, while others filter food out of the water with their tentacles. But the weirdest behavior of a sea cucumber occurs when under attack - it spills its guts, literally!

The sea cucumber throws up long, sticky threads - which are its own internal organs. These sticky threads can glue a predator’s throat shut, which will eventually kill the predator. Does the sea cucumber die? Of course not. His body parts are soon regenerated, and he continues on without harm. How did the first sea cucumber survive the first time he spilled his guts? From the very beginning, he had to have the ability to vomit out his sticky organs and then have the ability to regrow them. Evolution would have us believe that this defense method came about by slow stepwise processes. If this were true, there would be no sea cucumbers today.

Lord, You are God, who made heaven and earth and the sea, and all that is in them.

~ Acts 4:24

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

Daily Devotional - January 11

Biology

A wonder of the ocean is the porcupine fish. This creature has three lines of defense. If a predator comes too near the porcupine fish, it quickly gulps a large amount of water, almost doubling its size. Hopefully, the fish is now too large to be swallowed. If the predator persists, the second line of defense kicks in, and 2 inch long spines stand out in every direction, making the fish look like an underwater porcupine.

The third line of defense is poison within its body. If a predator eats the fish, it will get sick and won’t likely eat one again. The porcupine fish does not have many predators!

How do evolutionists explain the way these three lines of defense came about over millions of years? Even Darwin in his book The Voyage of the Beagle did not try to explain how the porcupine fish got its three lines of defense. We know! The Creator designed this fish to survive in this manner.

Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; And His greatness is unsearchable.
~ Psalm 145:3

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

Daily Devotional - January 10

Botany

The bunchberry dogwood plant has a built-in trebuchet. A what you ask? A trebuchet is a medieval projectile-launcher. Envision it as a complex catapult. During the Middle Ages, trebuchets were designed using the principles of leverage to propel large objects faster and farther than a simple catapult. Bunchberries carpet the spruce-fir forests of North America in late April to May. The flower centers (where the pollen is produced) are only 0.1” tall so the pollen needs to be propelled upward to reach other flowers. High speed video cameras were needed to see how this plant sends its pollen flying. Scientists first tried with a camera that was able to take 1,000 pictures a second, but this proved to be too slow to capture the trebuchet’s speed. So they brought in cameras capable of capturing 10,000 pictures a second. What they saw amazed them.

As bunchberry flower petals open, each petal is separated and flipped backwards (out of the way). Almost instantaneously, the stamen unfurls, catapulting pollen into the air and sending it off to pollinate other bunchberries. What is so amazing is the speed at which this process takes place. The unfurling of the petals to the launching of the pollen takes only four-tenths of a thousandth of a second. This causes the pollen to be subjected to 2,400 times the force of gravity. This is quite a projectile launcher!

Building a trebuchet took planning and design in the same way the bunchberry’s miniature trebuchet took planning and design. When you see a design, you know there must be a designer. It is difficult to imagine how a plant evolved to have each of its individual petals rapidly flip down and out of the way at just the right time. If the stamen’s miniature trebuchet was not ready to fire, nothing would happen. In the same way, a rapid fire pollen launcher would not be needed unless the petals burst open at the right time. Everything has to be coordinated perfectly from the beginning to do exactly what is needed.

Great is the Lord, and most worthy of praise.
~ Psalm 48:1

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

Daily Devotional - January 9

Design

Imagine you are an engineer working for Tupperware and given the following assignment - design a new container and its food with the following characteristics(1):

• The container is one color when the contents are not aged sufficiently for peak taste, then changes to a different color when the food is perfect to eat, and changes to a third color when the food inside has gone bad.
• The container is hard to open when the food is not ready to eat and easy to open when the food is ripe.
• The food inside changes texture as it ages. During transport the food is hard and durable. At peak taste the contents will soften to a perfect texture, and once past prime, it will become soft and gooey.
• The food inside naturally contains a wide variety of vitamins and minerals.(2)
• It is so easy to produce that billions can be sold at a few pennies per unit.
• The shape allows for single-handed handling, opening and eating while talking on the phone or conversing with a friend.
• The serving size is perfect for one average adult without waste.
• One last specification is that the food and container are capable of reproducing themselves. A team of thousands of engineers, working for their entire career, might as well quit and find other jobs because they have been assigned a humanly impossible task. Yet, we already have it - the banana! God shows His power through what He has made; He truly is the Master Engineer!

O taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man that trusteth in him.

~ Psalm 34:8

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

Daily Devotional - January 8

Microbiology

Imagine finding a very large bullfrog hopping through your backyard. Biochemists tell us that this frog contains hundreds of thousands of complex chemicals. Thus all the parts needed for life are contained within its body. So what will happen if we drop the bullfrog into a kitchen blender and add lots of energy by blending it? Will a new form of life develop since all the parts are present? We may create a frog smoothie, but we will never create a new form of life. Even if you take the frog smoothie and add other forms of energy (by microwaving, baking, or electrocuting) you are only going to end up with a frog smoothie – not some new form of life. We could continue adding various forms of energy for millions of years – still no new form of life will ever develop.

It is not enough to have the correct parts for life; these parts must also be arranged in a perfect sequence – all in the correct place. Yet life is more than just having the correct sequence. What makes life? Science textbooks can describe the mechanisms of how life operates but not how life came about. If our bullfrog was dead, how would it become alive again? All the parts are present, but life is missing! Life is not within our grasp to understand. We cannot restore life to the dead bullfrog, let alone create life in a blender. The Bible tells us that God created life; He is the source of all life!

Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created...

~ Psalm 104:30a

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett