GOD’S WORD FOR APRIL 15
GOD’S WORD FOR APRIL 15 ~ ~ Psalm 148:7~ ~ “Praise the LORD from the earth, ye dragons, and all deeps:”
There are around 500 species of jellyfish, sometimes called see jellies, ranging in size from small marbles to several feet across. They are found in oceans all over the world, and also in fresh water lakes.
These gooey piles of Jell-O have several mouths and will try to eat anything, including each other.
They have a stinging apparatus on their tentacles, and, as assumed, their stings are used to paralyze or subdue their prey. The stinging cells used by jellyfish can injure humans. Thousands of swimmers worldwide are stung every year, with effects ranging from mild discomfort to serious injury or even death.
Most are free-swimming with the use of their tentacles, however, a few are anchored to the seabed by stalks rather than being mobile. The bell-shaped part of their body pulsates to help in moving.
They can become a nuisance because when conditions are favorable, jellyfish can form vast swarms, which can be responsible for damage to fishing gear by filling fishing nets, and sometimes clog the cooling systems of power plants which draw their water from the sea.
Even though the jellyfish appears to be one of the simplest forms of life on Earth, it is also a mathematically precise hunter. While they cannot move fast enough to chase prey, they also don’t swim at random. The pattern in which they swim produces the greatest mathematical likelihood of encountering prey. They have a complex brain inside all that goo. In fact, some of them have sophisticated brain functions that – outside of jellyfish – are found only in mammals and human beings!
Physically, though, they’re pretty simple. They only have two internal organs—stomach and sex organs. This pretty well explains their obsession with eating, but reproduction is out of the ordinary. They have two very different lifestyles depending upon their phase of life. The familiar jellyfish form is a swimming lifestyle in which the creatures reproduce sexually. In another phase of their life, they are called polyps. In the polyp stage, they look like small anemones, cling to rocks and reproduce by cloning.
They vary greatly in color, shapes and sizes between the 500 species. But, one thing they have in common———-they’re all softies!!!!
No matter what they’re doing, they’re doing it for their Creator. Like all creation, being what they were created to be, gives glory to God.
Whether tied down or free to swim; individual or in a swarm; stinging or taking it easy; Figuring math problems, or running into prey; reproducing this way or the other; varied colors, sizes and shapes. There is a variety in their lives. They all have their jobs to do like the rest of God’s creation. They work individually for the whole under the constant direction of their Creator.
Doesn’t that sound like us—-the saved—the Church? We are so individually different, our goals are different; our looks, actions, abilities, gifts, personalities……all different, but if we constantly have our eyes on our Lord and Savior, just like creation does in its simple way, we will glorify Him with our lives.
There’s one more thing. All of the jellyfish have to eat a lot in order to get done what they need to to praise and glorify Him like the Word says they do. God gave them an appetite for that.
And so do we have to eat spiritually. God gave us an appetite for it too. Our food is the secret food that Jesus told His disciples about in John 4:32, “But He said to them, ‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’ ” His food, and ours, is the Word of God and prayer.
We can’t please God, much less glorify Him, if we don’t really know Him. The only way to know Him is through His Word. We need to eat as often as we can. Junk food kills the appetite for real food. It’s the same spiritually. Worldly entertainment will take up time needed for knowing the Savior and Creator of the Universe and all that is in it. It also stunts the spiritual appetite that God puts in us so that He can give us the grace we need to get through life in this world, and stand firm until the end, no matter what comes. Then, we will enjoy the eternal life He has waiting for us…………if we’re saved.
If you aren’t, then you still need the food of the Word, in order to get to the place of knowing where you stand, and knowing Who you are to believe.
John 3:16 ~ ~ “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.
For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died;
So you too, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Live in the Light of Our Lord 