Shade Tree Wisdom 10/14/09

It is kind of hard to step out the door at 6 to meet July humidity. But the forecasters do predict a cooler and sunnier weekend, and that is nice to look forward to.

The news has a story of a girl who was kidnapped from her bedroom when she was 8, driven to a field, raped and left with a slit throat. It was 14 hours before children playing saw the body and reported it. The victim was rushed to a hospital and survived the ordeal. Now DNA found a match from some clothing the perpetrator left behind, and arrested a man in north Little Rock. He waits extradition to Texas, held under a million dollar bond.

That reminded me of creation, and the migration of the Monarch Butterfly from Canada to the Sierra Madrid Mountains in Mexico. This butterfly is the only insect that migrates both north and south, and such a distance, over 3,000 miles, each season. They use wind and thermals. They cross the Great Lakes, and when the wind goes in a wrong direction, they find a ship to rest on till the wind changes again. In the Mountains they cluster in oyamel fir forests which shelters them, and they stay there for five months.

Then the homeward journey begins. Now they are mature, mate, the female lays from 3-400 eggs, then dies. When the eggs mature, the butterfly continues the migration. The mystery is that it is the third and fourth generation that complete the journey home. While the journey to Mexico is done by the same insect.

They don’t fly at night, but usually find fir, pine, or cedar trees for the night. This migration is so amazing, and scientists have not yet found just how they do it, and return to the same place they started from.

It is one of God’s creations, as is the DNA, or the fingerprint, different for each person.

It just brings us back to Genesis. “And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” And “By the seventh day God had finished the work He had been doing, so on the seventh day He rested from all Hs work.” Genesis l,31;2,2.

GPD 10/14/09