Musings about our Creator

The Hidden Beauty Within Creation

For most of mankind’s history a great deal of God’s glorious creation has been unseen by us. The only audience has been the Trinity and perhaps a few angels. Satellite image of the United Kingdom.Consider this; for thousands of years, no human being has enjoyed a high altitude view of our world, gazed into a microscope or imagined the bizarre creatures living in our oceans’ darkest depths.

Images From Space

It’s only been in the last half of the 20th century that we started launching satellites. The first satellite Sputnik 1 orbited the earth in 1957. Before the mid 20th century, no human had ever seen our planet from outer space. The Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first on April 12, 1961. It was almost a decade later before we started seeing color images from space taken by the Apollo astronauts. Now the Internet shares YouTube videos from the International Space Station depicting how to water plants or wash your hair in low gravity.

The Secret Microscopic World

Anton van Leeuwenhoek invented the first true microscope in the 1600s. He drew detailed pictures of everything he observed, including bacteria and the strange living creatures found in a drop of water. Stained bacteria, taken with an electron microscope.But modern classroom microscopes didn’t start to be mass produced for colleges and schools until around the 1930s, about the time the first photomicroscope was invented. That’s only 85 years ago–within living memory. The 1st commercial scanning electron microscopes came on the market in 1965.

Bees are Furry!

It turns out even many things we did see in our natural world, we didn’t see clearly. Macro photography uses special camera lenses to capture extreme close-up images. For fast moving creatures such as insects, all sorts of techniques and tricks have been developed to slow them down, such as a brief stay in the refrigerator.

 

Extreme close-up of a fuzzy, golden, plasterer bee.

Sometimes the photographer even brings them into the studio in order to highlight some unusual features, like the furriness of this bee.

The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau

People have been diving in the ocean for centuries, using primitive diving bells and helmets, An underwater image of a sea anemone.but they couldn’t go deep or take photos of what they saw. In the winter of 1942-1943 French Naval Lieutenant Jacques Cousteau and engineer Emile Gagnan invented the Aqua-Lung  or “self-contained underwater breathing apparatus” (SCUBA). Because this new invention helped divers stay underwater much longer, the Aqua Lung quickly became popular, out-selling other rival underwater breathing tanks.

His television show, The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau detailed the wonders of ocean life for ten years, starting in 1966. The public for the first timeA golden seahorse, underwater. explored colorful coral reefs and learned interesting facts about stingrays, starfish, whales, sharks, sea turtles and other sea creatures in their natural habitat. A second documentary series, The Cousteau Odyssey aired from 1977 to 1982. For many of us it was the first time we saw underneath the ocean’s surface. Public aquariums had existed since a few years before the American Civil War, but nothing beat the excitement and magic of these filmed undersea explorations. For thousands of years, very few human beings saw any of these amazing sea creatures. Then suddenly we all did.

Why Make These Amazing Parts of Creation Invisible?

It’s only been in my lifetime that so much of God’s hidden creation has become visible. So why did He create such an exquisite invisible world, completely unknown to us?

Maybe it’s because our God is a true artist, who simply delights in creating.

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his external power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. Romans 1:20 (NIV)

All images are from Pixabay.com.

Resources:

Episodes of The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau are available on YouTube.

Just click on this link: Jacques Cousteau

Final word on the furry bee question: I spoke with one of my co-workers who is a beginning bee keeper. She and her husband took courses about how to set up a hive, establish a bee colony and collect the honey. According to her information, bees are fuzzy because it helps them spread pollen more efficiently and fertilize other plants.

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