GOD’S WORD FOR JULY 3 ~ ~ Psalm 65:9 ~ ~ “You visit the earth and cause it to overflow;
You greatly enrich it; The stream of God is full of water; You prepare their grain, for so You prepare the earth.”

“I smell a skunk” NO, it’s just this skunk cabbage! It is an amazingly created plant, that is a friend and life saver to the honey bee as well as others. It’s God’s warming house on a cold spring day, and melts the snow around itself in order to be the first to bloom. As you probably guessed, it gets its name from the unpleasant odor it emits. This scent is a way for the plant to attract pollinators that are attracted to rotting meat. The scent is especially noticeable when the plant is injured. It travels easily because it is carried on the warm air that constantly rises from the spathe.

Thus, this plant is way ahead of any other flower to bloom in the spring, and even if the temperature drops to 10 degrees in the spring, and all others freeze out, the skunk cabbage is cozy in its heated tent, where it maintains a constant temperature of 72 to 74 degrees F. Worst case scenario, if the temperature dips lower than 10 degrees, for 24 hours, that flower will freeze and die, but, no worries, the plant will just prepare a new flower and turn on the heater again!!

It even has a built-in thermostat. Heat is summoned or withdrawn as needed to keep it between those temperatures. It’s not selfish either. It shares its heat with early-out honey bees, which have a difficult time if the temperature is below 65 degrees F. In that case, the bees will drop by and warm their feet in the skunk cabbage before moving on. With these warm-ups, they can work in temperatures as low as 45 degrees. Many times, if it’s a cold trip for the bees back to their hives, they will simply hop to each cabbage flower to warm up, in order to make it back.

Not only is this an amazing creation, it shows how God uses different animals and plants to help each other in this fallen and difficult world. OH! For the time when all of God’s people will be on the New Earth and New Heaven, and all will be perfect—- and the bees won’t have cold feet!

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