An Adventure at the Aquarium
The NC Aquarium in Roanoke, North Carolina has a unique, underwater exhibit, featuring stingrays.
The tank is circular, the size of a large bedroom and perhaps three feet deep. People stand around the outer rim.
Stingrays who want to be touched by the visitors swim a few inches below the water’s surface, circling the outside wall. People can reach into the water and touch these graceful, undersea creatures as they glide by.
Running your hand along a stingray’s wing is like stroking a soft, underwater kitten, or touching soft suede. The stingrays themselves decide whether to come to us or not. Any stingray can avoid all human contact by staying in the center of the tank, two or three feet below the surface.
They rest undisturbed on the bottom.
I don’t know why a stingray would enjoy being stroked by people—but some of them obviously do.
Newcomers to the Stingray Tank
Any stingray put in such a strange new environment would naturally huddle in the tank’s center, out of reach.
Perhaps the aquarium staff encourages these strange sea creatures to approach the side of the tank by feeding them close to the edge.
Or maybe the newer rays grow curious and come to check the humans out.
In the end, each stingray chooses whether or not to trust these loud, weird alien creatures looking down into the water at them. Some rays grow bold and start circling the inner wall. Others remain safely out of everyone’s reach,
Like the individual stingrays, each Christian chooses how closely to approach God.
God Patiently Waits: My Own Story
Like the stingrays, Christians can be equally skittish around the Almighty until we start to know Him better.
When I first came to Christ, I had no idea about God’s tender heart toward me.
I didn’t want to get too close to the Lord. I felt God was disappointed in me, because I kept messing up and sinning. Yes, of course He loved me—everyone said so—but I thought He didn’t like me very much.
At 20 years old, my bad self-image warped everything. So the lies the Devil fed me about God’s feelings toward me felt ’emotionally true.’
This type of lie is always the toughest to fight.
Fortunately, I was wrong about God’s opinion of me. Over the next few years, the Holy Spirit made my emotional healing a top priority. The way the Trinity answered my prayers when I was a baby Christian stunned me. The Holy Spirit also used some Bible verses to change my whole view of myself.
God even used other Christian students, like Barb, who often repeated;
“Maureen, God made you and God doesn’t make junk.”
It was such a simple saying, yet I couldn’t argue with it. I knew it was true.
One day, I started believing not only in my head, but also in my heart that God sees me as special and precious to Him. That truth has made all the difference.
Do you still struggle with bad feelings about yourself? Or feel the Almighty is disappointed or angry at you? He’s not—these are just Satan’s lies. Start praying for healing and then watch God work.
All my stingray images were downloaded from Pixabay.com.
Resources:
Touching Stingrays at the NC Aquarium in Roanoke. (click here)
A video of Stingray City with Guy Harvey | JONATHAN BIRD’S BLUE WORLD (click here)
Some Basic Stingray Biology
For some reason, this stingray pressed its underbelly against the glass wall of the aquarium.. Maybe the air conditioning or heat made the glass feel warmer or colder than the surrounding water.
Who knows?
However, despite the friendly child-like “face,” this stingray isn’t looking at us. Instead, its eyes are watching the other tank-mates.
Stingrays bury themselves in the sand because they eat clams, worms and other burrowing animals. But rays need to see predators, like sharks, which hunt them. So their eyes are on the top portion of their body
