[Alaric Reinner]

The world around us is full of many amazing and beautiful things that God has created. It says in Genesis 8:4 "For God put the animals great and small for man to marvel upon and so man did look upon the duck and the clam and he did weep with joy".
It is a beautiful universe that God has created for us and today we will take you on an adventure of learning. Some of these creatures are so strange that only someone as wise and almighty as God could have imagined them!

We begin our journey on the Amazon River, the mightiest river that the Lord has placed upon the earth. It is so large that if astronauts were real they would be able to look upon it from the great lie of outer space!

One of the Amazon's largest inhabitants is the Boto, also known as the Pink Dolphin of the Amazon River. The pink color of the dolphin combined with the tea-like color of the Amazon River makes the dolphin look just like a beautiful woman under water.

The Boto is so beautiful and docile that fishermen and narco-traffickers have been known to wade out into the water and make love to the willing creature. This is not a sin, for as is written in Corinthians 11:7 "Saul's wife did turn away from Saul and recoil from his touch and Saul did go out upon the river and find a new wife, and he knew this wife again and again, yet no child did come of their union. And the Lord was glad."

For a fun project, make your hand into a tight fist and place the first two knuckles of your fist against your lips. This is what it's like to kiss a dolphin!

Another one of God's beautiful creatures can be found in the Amazon, but this little fellow is much smaller! He is called the Candiru Fish and he is just about the size of a toothpick.

Mr. Candiru is a very funny fish that God has made. He likes to smell the water for pee that comes out of the water lungs of catfish. He follows the smell all the way into the lungs of the catfish and hooks on and then drinks the blood of the catfish.

Sometimes he smells the pee that comes out of men and women who walk into the water and he might go inside of them and drink their blood! Isn't that silly? God has created the Candiru to remind us that his water is not our toilet.

You can turn to Ezekiel 4:4 and read what God says about going to the bathroom in the water.

"Jacob went down to the sea and he did move his bowels upon the wave with furious scorn. There was a great rumble from above and lightning did flash and the Lord said unto Jacob; 'Go no more upon My water or in My water or beneath My water. Go only upon the land and the mountain and the tree.' Jacob did not heed the word of God and he moved his bowels a second time and then was seized up in the jaws of a great otter of the depths and swallowed whole."

Wow! Better hold it next time, huh?

Another one of God's strange and wonderful creations is the Giardia, a type of flagellated protozoa. This little mischief-maker likes to hide in our drinking water and get inside of our bodies in a cool glass of lemonade or iced tea. Once inside he will make us sick in all kinds of different ways and he comes out of our bodies and makes our friends, family, and even our pets sick! This disease is sometimes called "Beaver Fever" because campers get it when they drink water that comes out of a beaver dam. This is, unfortunately, the sweetest type of water.

If you want to try something really fun, look at a Giardia under a Christian microscope and you will see what looks like a silly clown's face! This is God's sense of humor. We didn't say it was very good.

You may wonder why God would create a parasite to go inside our bodies and make us sick. The reason is very simple: it is part of God's Plan. While Giardia are not mentioned specifically in the Bible, a passage from Deuteronomy (6:18) does address this subject.

"Hecus tore at his gut and cast his hands up in despair. He cursed the name of the fluke that was within him and he blamed the Lord for its transgressions. With a great peal of thunder the Lord appeared before Hecus as a violet thousand-eyed apple and the Lord spoke unto Hecus. 'Blame not the fluke, nor the leech, nor the tick, nor the kobold. The smallest animal and the largest rock are all part of My Plan.' And Hecus did wail and rend his tunic and ask God to reveal his plan and with a booming voice God did reply unto Hecus, 'No! This is just a rough draft and I am not ready to show it to anyone yet!'"

Boy Hecus, show some restraint! Everyone knows that God's Plan is revealed incrementally through the events in our world, like the Super Bowl and the Holocaust.

For our last example of God's wonderful creation we have to go back to a very long time ago. Thousands of years ago, when the docile vegetable-eating tyrannosaurus walked the earth, there was a flood that encompassed all the earth. God warned his prophet Noah that he was to collect two of each of the beasts of nature and place them on his ship (the Ark) or else God would kill him painfully over many days.

One of the most interesting creatures that Noah rescued from certain destruction was Arthropleura. This 6-10 foot long arthropod was basically a gigantic centipede - the largest land invertebrate of all time - and boy did Noah have a tough time getting him on board the Ark! You can read all about it in Genesis 7:2.

"The armored beast did snap through the net cast upon its back by Shem and both he and Japheth took flight. Much later Noah returned to the scene and gazed upon the hissing countenance of the beast. Then he did prostrate himself before it and say 'O armored beast, I beseech you in the name of the Lord to journey onto my ship and live among the camel and the unicorn and the kobold and the small dragons'."

"And then only did the beast climb up the ladder upon a thousand feet and it did bite and devour many aboard the Ark. Even as the rains lashed the decks the cries could be heard from the animal pens as the great armored beast set upon a hippogriff or a chimera. With no wit left to him, Noah did take up a spear and shout to God, 'O mighty Lord, this is bullshit' and he did smite the beast with great effort and personal risk. And then he remembered that he brought two of them upon the ship as the Lord had demanded and Noah did curse God."

Even Noah wasn't clued into God's Plan!

I hope you have enjoyed this fun and educational look at just a few of the beautiful creatures that God has created for our amusement. Next month we will begin our unit entitled "Paleontologists: the Pawns of Satan". Bye bye!