I Love To Sing!

If you ever need a testimony to our wonderful Creator, call on me – I sing for Him! Every day, Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer, I love to practice my high-pitched melodies: chirp, chirp, trrrrilll…chirp, chirp, trrrrilll! (I’m only being modest when I tell you my Creator gave me a lovely voice.) In fact, on a cold winter day, mine may be the only bird song you hear.

But you may have to do some trekking to hear me. Yes, I like the mountains of southeast Alaska or western Canada, where the air is clear and the rushing, turbid streams are sparkling and pure. Strange, I have a passion for pure water. If it becomes polluted, I move!

Why do I sing so much? When I tell you more about myself, you will realize I have a whole lot to sing about!

Do you want to know who I am? I belong to a plucky clan of birds; they call us the “dippers”. My formal name is a “Water Ouzel”. We are always “dipping” with our legs. Wherever you see me, I’m bobbing. Standing on a rock in the middle of the stream, I’m bobbing. Why? People have done a lot of guessing, but…well, we say it’s a secret between our Great Creator and us. I’m not very big, about 6 inches long as an adult – but my Creator has fine-tuned me very well ecologically.

Like many other water birds, I can fly, or walk, or dive. I especially like to walk on the streambed, completely submerged. The water is my first love – probably because most of the things I like to eat live there. But it must be moving swiftly. No still, placid waters for me!

You see, my Creator gave me just the right equipment to navigate the shallow, rushing streams. Even my toes are just right. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed – they aren’t webbed but elongated, with sharp claws, just right for gripping the rocks in the stream. In fact, I HAVE to grip the rocks when I am under water – or I would bob right up to the top! And if there are any fish eggs or larva hidden under a rock, I have just the right kind of beak to reach under the rock and suck them up. Yum yummmm!

I imagine you like to swim, and maybe some of you even like to dive. Now may I ask: do you ever get water in your nose when you dive? Well, I don’t, because my Creator designed me with nasal flaps. I don’t even have to think about it. When I dive, the flaps cover my nostrils so that no water enters my air passages. Isn’t that pretty wonderful?

And do you know how I swim under water? Again, I must sing to my Creator. He designed my wings to lift me into the air, or I can open them part way under water and they become powerful flappers propelling me through the water.

I expect too that when you swim underwater, you like to open your eyes. I do also. In fact, I have to see if I am going to find food – which is my reason for swimming underwater. Well, here again I sing chirp, chirp, trrrilll to my Creator. He designed me with an extra eyelid that has a clear lens in it. When I use that extra eyelid, my eye is “closed”, yet I can see! You don’t believe it? Yes, I can see when my eyes are fully protected from the water. Isn’t that amazing? But don’t give me any credit for evolving it or anything like that – this is the work of my wonderful Designer!

Suppose I’m under water and I need more oxygen. Again, my Designer thought of this need. I can actually block the blood supply (don’t think I learned it on my own!) to my non-vital tissues. This way I have extra red blood cells to supply me with stored oxygen. All I have to do is need it – and there it is!

Now when you go swimming, you put on special clothes that shed water easily. What do I do? Imagine if my thick coat of feathers got soaked every time I went for a swim! Wouldn’t I be a sorry sight? I would have to spend most of my time lying on a rock, trying to dry out! And in the winter…I’d freeze to death! Well, my Creator planned a way for me to waterproof myself! Yes, I have a large gland above my tail that makes oil. In fact, He gave me ten times more oil than the average songbird my size! Every little while I spread this oil over my “outer garment”, and – I’m waterproofed! It’s another reason to keep on singing His praise! Chirp, chirp, trrrrilll!

Now if I guess right, when you go swimming you like the water to be fairly warm. Well, that’s a luxury we dippers don’t have in the high altitudes of the north. Most of our swimming is in very, very cold – even icy – water. I can hear you say “Brrrr!” Well, here again I feel like singing. My awesome Designer made me weatherproof as well as waterproof. Underneath my heavy outer plumage I have a thick, comfy layer of down, similar to that of the ducks, to insulate me against the cold. What a planner my Creator is! When it gets really cold – like 40 degrees below zero – I can speed up my body metabolism rate by as much as 300%! (That’s like turning up the furnace.) So even when it’s the coldest, I am still warm and cozy inside. My ancestors didn’t learn to do this over eons of time. My Creator made us this way right from the first “dipper” or we wouldn’t have survived.

When it comes time to build the nest, both of us (my husband and I) work together. Have you ever seen one of my nests? I challenge you to find one without risking your neck. (I’ve heard that some people have). We intend to keep our nests totally hidden and inaccessible – like up under overhanging rocks or roots on the edge of a cliff, or up under a bridge, or in behind a waterfall. Yes, we believe in “safety first”!

For materials we use moss and grass. The finished nest is large, about a foot in diameter. We take turns sitting on the eggs, and when it comes time to feed the little chicks, again we work together. Even the chicks cooperate. Each little chick comes forward to get its food and after it is fed, retreats to the back of the nest, allowing the next one to come forward. Yes, the Creator made us to believe we should work together.

What do we like to eat? We like minnows, larvae, insects, and such. One of my favorite foods is salmon eggs. Now we have been accused of damaging the salmon population. But my Creator knew better than that. He arranged that we eat the salmon eggs in places which will not hatch anyway. He guides us to those places and maybe He even provided them special for us!

So what do you think? Shouldn’t I go on singing, singing, singing every day, all winter long? Of course I should. AND SO SHOULD YOU! The same Designer who made me also made you. And as happy as I am, you should be even happier because He has a lot more for you. Why not praise Him? Chirp, chirp, trrrrilll! Chirp, chirp, trrrilll!

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Swimming Blind In Muddy Water

Let me ask you a question: What would you do if you had to live all the time in a fog so dense that you could not see anything around you, so dense that you could not see enough even to locate any food to eat; or find a friend to talk to? What would you do?

That is the problem some of us tropical fresh water fish have. I have eyes, yes. But most of the time I am not able to use them because I live mostly near the bottom of a muddy river. My vision is not hindered by fog but by mud. I live in such murky water that eyes such as most fish have are almost useless.

A problem? Not for my masterful Designer! He has actually worked out a way for me to “see” through the mud using my own home-made electricity. Scientists call me the “Electric Elephant-Nose Fish”. They call me a “weak electric fish” because I make only a very small amount of electricity (about one volt), but that doesn’t mean the process is simple. In fact, my Designer thought up a plan so complicated that He had to give me a super-size brain to be able to do all the calculating required. It’s said that in relation to the size of my body, my brain is bigger than yours! And it is ten times bigger than that of most fish!

So I must have a super-size head? No, my Creator actually made my brain in a very special way so that I can have a lot of brain in a very small head. He designed my brain with folds in it, much as you would put folds in a blanket or a piece of cloth. If that isn’t design! You see, He knew I would need the extra brain capacity for my highly specialized electric “eyes”. Part of the process of “seeing” for me is performing a huge amount of mathematical calculations very quickly – before my dinner swims away (if it is good to eat!), or before it attacks me (if it is something dangerous).

Now there is another side to this extra amount of brain: Brain tissue consumes energy at a rate ten times faster than average body tissue. You might think of me as you would think of a special kind of automobile that requires between 20 and 30 times as much gasoline as the average car. Most animals use between two and eight percent of their energy to power their brains. Humans use about 20%. My brain gets about 60% of the energy generated from the food I eat. So what is my biggest problem? You guessed it – I’m always hungry!

One thing I can tell you for sure, my kind didn’t just happen. In fact, I’ve heard that some scientists have spent years studying us in the laboratories, trying to understand just how we make and use electricity to identify what is in our environment.

How does it work? First of all, my Creator has equipped me with some very special hardware. I have cells in my tail that act like tiny batteries connected in series. When my brain sends a message to these cells in my tail, telling them to “Fire!”, they fire. This creates an electrical field in the area around my body.

But that is only half of it. My Creator has also equipped me with electro-receptors. These devices, imbedded just under the surface of my skin, are so sensitive that they can detect the slightest change in that electrical field around my body. When a moving object enters the electric field, these receptors pick up the information (its location, size, color, thickness, even its consistency) and send all this information to my brain. In just a fraction of a second, my brain has analyzed the information and I know exactly what the object is – whether it is something good for dinner, or just a piece of shell or stone. Or an enemy.

When a delectable animal swims into my electric field, do you know what I do? I swim backwards to grab it. Why? If I were to continue in forward motion, I’d likely miss it, because by the time I detected the prey with the current from my tail and turned around, the prey would be safely out of range. By quickly shifting into my “reverse” gear, it’s an easy catch! Then I use that funny trunk-like projection on my nose to suck it in (this thing is just right for worms, bugs and plankton – Yummm!).

Using this same electric field my Designer has made me able to “talk” to other electric fish. I can’t tell you much about the language we use, but we have no difficulty understanding each other.

Now here’s another question for you. When I go traveling I often encounter other electric fish just like myself, who also surround themselves with an electric field to be able to “see” and “talk”. Now just picture five of us, each with our own electric field, each sensing the other’s fields. Can you imagine the confusion when we try to “talk” among ourselves? Wouldn’t you think we would “jam” each other’s receptors, so that none of us would know anything, because each of us read information at the same fixed frequency?

Well, my Creator thought of this problem before I came along, and prepared an easy, effective solution. When I meet another electric elephant-nose fish, my frequency automatically changes just slightly, so that it is different from that of the others. In fact, all of us in a group will change to different frequencies! Say I’m broadcasting at 400 Hertz, I may go up suddenly to 405 Hertz. Maybe my neighbor will drop to 399 Hertz, another may go up to 402, and so on, so that each of us can do our own “broadcasting” without interfering with the other. The result: total order, and total jamming avoidance. We can have a clear, friendly conversation. And when we swim away from each other, each of us returns to our own normal frequency.

I’ve heard that our technique of jamming avoidance has provided your scientists with some very useful information. But they can’t take the credit for the design – my Creator gets that!

I hear that there are many other creatures from my Great Designer that have very individual, very special functional apparatus that are very necessary for their life existence. I have met some of these creatures in my own environment. It is truly amazing how complicated, and yet how necessary these design properties are.

I hear some of your scientists talking about how the “survival of the species” caused random action over eons of times to “create” these terrific organs and functions. Now I’m no expert on the subject, and you have more “intellect” to reason things out than I do, but I’ll tell you this: My super-sized brain calculators inform me that, MATHEMATICALLY, the chances of this “evolution” of such complicated organs are two – slim and none!

I love how my Creator and Designer made me! Sure, the water I swim in could be clearer. But so what? I can live in it, I can “see’ in it electrically, I can even thrive in it. What more could a creature want? Don’t you want to get acquainted with my Creator?

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Who Needs Hierarchy?

The following article written by syndicated columnist Cal Thomas appeared in newspapers on July 10, 2003:

“America’s grand concept of liberty applies to faith as well — individuals choose what to believe, how to behave.

Thomas Jefferson — whose greatest work, the Declaration of Independence, was celebrated for the 227th time last Friday — observed in 1774: “The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.” That was one of those rare church-state moments that rings as true as the Liberty Bell did before it cracked. And yet, we witness people in the world and, I fear, increasingly in our country, who believe and act as if God not only gave life, but also required us to be in bondage.

There is something that has always bothered me about “religion,” and it applies to a lot of faiths. It is the notion that God needs puny, fallen and imperfect human beings, who are around for an average of just 70 years, to carry out His will.

Does this make sense? A God who is said to have created the universe out of nothing and who controls the keys to life and death (not to mention hell and heaven) must rely on human beings to execute judgment — such as homicide bombers in Pakistan and Moscow — and deliver blessings? What kind of weak, dysfunctional God is that? Why can’t He stand up and fight like, well, God?

This attitude is not unique to certain people who claim to speak for Islam. Like many other faiths, Islam comprises people with different beliefs, interpretations and lifestyles. Certain fundamentalist Christians behave similarly, telling people what they can and must not drink, should and should not wear and, again, depending on interpretations, whether they must or must not change their government to more accurately mirror what they see as the Kingdom of God.

This cleric says you should pray so many times a day, abstain from pork and have nothing to do with people who don’t believe as he does. That cleric says pork is OK, but you can’t drink anything with alcohol in it, although cough medicine with a 12 percent alcoholic content apparently makes the approved list.

The question remains: Why should I listen to a man (and it’s always a man, isn’t it?) with something on his head, or around his neck, or in a robe or a suit? He is just like me. He gets angry. He sins. He is fallen. He will die. Why does he get to speak for God, while I have no say in the matter? Am I not allowed to read “holy writ,” think for myself and behave accordingly?

Are ordained people necessarily better spiritually than those who are not ordained? Recent Catholic and Protestant church scandals would seem to suggest otherwise. When Jefferson spoke of God giving us liberty, he said a wise thing. He echoed the Old Testament prophet Joshua, who said, “Choose this day whom you will serve...” and he added “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15). God gave him a choice, and he exercised it, but he didn’t impose that choice on others. There are benefits for choosing wisely and consequences for choosing wrongly. But liberty, not conformity, should be supreme.

Admittedly, this is a biblical notion. So is “Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.” When a mere human takes on the role of God, dispensing vengeance and judgment, and thus assuming the role God reserves for Himself~, he becomes guilty of that worst of all sins: pride. He is saying that only he knows what God wants.

It’s going to be difficult to win consideration for Jefferson’s noble observation in Pakistan and Russia and in many other places, but we should try. As Dinesh D’Souza wrote in The Washington Post, "virtue has great power, but not if it is imposed — only when it is chosen."
(end of article)

Through much of my life, I believed that the “Church” and “hierarchy” went together like bread and butter. I believed that it was just a normal thing to have a universal church organizational structure with one man (in my case, the Pope) as the universal head, and ordained hierarchy (in my case, cardinals, bishops and priests) as the ruling and governing body over the “laity” — the lower members of the church. It just seemed like a logical corporate structure.

But when I began to really study church history, it became obvious to me that this hierarchy structure was ripe for and did actually bring about the results of a very decadent and abusive human weakness — power and control at any cost.

The godly purpose for the hierarchy of serving the people easily fell into the ungodly expression of controlling the people. A study of church history shows a very decadent life style of the hierarchy through much of the ages. Certainly there were many good and faithful men and women in the church actually serving. I am not painting the whole institutional church with a broad brush. Many individual hierarchy lived faithful to their Lord, Jesus Christ.

When examining the lives of the bad Popes and immoral cardinals and bishops, I always heard the excuse, "But they were only men, and the church lives on!” And I accepted this reasoning for a long time.

Why not look back to the book of Acts and find out what kind of a structure the earliest church (or rather, “churches”) established by Peter and Paul consisted of?

Christianity started out in the first century with no priestly hierarchy structure involved in the formation of the first churches. There was just the pastor and his assistants in each church. In fact, Peter in his first epistle stated that every Christian was a “priest” — a member of a “royal priesthood” (chap. 2:5,9). The book of Hebrews is a convincing treatise that the idea of the need of a priesthood as existed in the Old Testament had been replaced and done away, Hebrews 4; 4 says that all any Christian needs is the great High-priest, Jesus Christ.

The churches that were established in the first century were very loosely organized and individualistic. Leaders of each church were chosen BY AND WITHIN each church itself. As people of gifted ability were discovered, they just naturally assumed the position of servants within the local church. The Bible says that they were ordained, but this word has no sacramental root. To be ordained simply meant that they selected elders by show of hands.

Only after the death of the original apostles did men begin to make centralizing changes in the organization of the church. The whole hierarchy structure began to be established and "ordination" of popes, cardinals, bishops, and priests became a sacramental exercise. This structure was presented to the “laity” as necessary for proper “service” within the Body of Christ. But rather than serving the children of God better and coordinating doctrinal teachings, pride within the hierarchy reared its ugly head. Control and self-preservation became the major function of the hierarchy.

Yes, as Cal Thomas states, “Am I not allowed to read ‘holy writ,’ think for myself and behave accordingly?” Indeed we are. At our new birth in union with Christ, the Holy Spirit within us becomes our Teacher. As a local Body of Christ, the members of a local church have a right and a duty to depend on the combined revelation which they receive from the Holy Spirit.

The assignment of hierarchy to a local church by a centralized command is not biblical. As we have seen with the Catholic church scandal, this situation has led to priests who are weak morally being placed in parishes where the laity unknowingly accepts them and set themselves up for sexual abuse. And the central hierarchy, in order to preserve the power structure and “defend the church”, creates a coverup of deceit and disinformation.

Am I being too harsh? Is Cal Thomas being too harsh? I don’t think so. What we have seen within the hierarchy structure within the last couple of years is only a continuation of centuries of abuse among many of the “clergy”.

Do what I did. Study the earliest church in the book of Acts. Study the history of the institutional church through Constantine, through the middle ages, through the Protestant reformation, and up to the present day, and I believe that it is clear that the problem is the HIERARCHY!

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