You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. [Psalm 139:13-14 (NLT)]
Effortlessly skimming over the water, the bird occasionally dipped its bill into the water before gracefully rising, circling the pond, and returning to skim along the water again. Even though I’d never seen one inland, the bird’s large bill, distinctive black and white coloring, and unique flight identified it as a black skimmer. Although skimmers usually spend their lives around sandy beaches and coastal islands, sometimes they feed in inland lakes during nesting season and I was thrilled to watch several skimming over our lake just before sunrise.
The skimmer’s beak is unique because its lower part is longer than its upper. As it skims over the water, the bird drags the bottom half of its beak through the water to collect small fish. When it contacts its prey, the skimmer bends its head forward and snaps the upper bill closed to catch its meal! Hunting solely by touch rather than by sight, skimmers feed from late evening until dawn when the waters are calm and the fish are closer to the surface.
Continuing my morning walk, I came upon a limpkin—another one of God’s creatures gifted with a unique and perfectly-designed beak. These wading birds eat snails and their bills are bent and twisted at the tip. With a gap just before the tip, the bill acts like tweezers. Curved slightly to the right, it easily slips into the right-handed curve of a snail’s shell.
I then spotted one of our resident brown pelicans nose-dive into the water for its breakfast and witnessed another one of God’s specialized bills. Unlike the skimmer who fishes by feel, a pelican can spot a fish from 60-feet up. When it plunges into the water, a large fibrous skin pouch dangling from its lower beak immediately opens and two to three gallons of water (along with any fish) are sucked in. The bird closes its beak, hangs its head down to let the water drain out the sides, and then flips up its beak and swallows the fish! God even provided the bird with a little hook on the tip of its upper beak to help it grip onto slippery fish!
Noticing a woodpecker drilling on a tree to get at insects under the bark, I saw how God tapered its beak to form a chisel perfectly designed for its task. With beaks clearly on my mind, I considered the aptly named roseate spoonbill with its spoon-like beak that serves as a strainer while it forages in the ponds; the hawk with its sharp hooked beak that enables it to catch, kill and tear up its prey; and the tiny hummingbird who can eat three times its body weight in a day. Its long needle-like bill fits deep into tubular flowers while its tongue darts in and out of the nectar about 13 times a second! God designed each of their bills with a specific purpose in mind.
While we people look more alike than do a skimmer and a spoonbill or hummingbird, God has endowed each one of us with unique capabilities perfectly designed for our specific purpose in life. Rather than a specialized beak, we have unique traits, talents, strengths, and abilities that set us apart from one another. Just as the bills of the skimmer and hummingbird were designed for the roles they play in the ecosystem, we have been specifically designed for the role that God has assigned us in the world—a role unlike that of anyone else.
Whether teacher, pastor, chef, clerk, janitor, farmer, dishwasher, programmer, carpenter, maintenance worker, musician, mail carrier, or barista, no one is insignificant. The very hairs on our head are numbered and Jesus told us we’re more valuable than a flock of sparrows (whose short cone-shaped beaks are perfectly designed to crack open seeds). The God who designed the spear-like bill of the anhinga to impale fish and the whimbrel’s curved bill to fit into a fiddler crab’s burrow knew exactly what He was doing when He designed each and every one of us. Designed for a purpose, we are one-of-a-kind creations made by the hands of God. May we serve Him well!
You are who you are for a reason.
You’re part of an intricate plan.
You’re a precious and perfect unique design,
Called “God’s special woman or man.”
You look like you look for a reason.
Our God made no mistake.
He knit you together within the womb,
You’re just what He wanted to make!
[Russell Kelfer]
Our sons recently visited to celebrate their father’s birthday. As I watched them work their culinary magic in the kitchen, I marveled at how the boys who once thought Kraft mac n’ cheese to be haute cuisine became gourmet cooks. For that matter, when did they get so tall or those wrinkles appear around their eyes? At what point did the tow-headed boy’s hair darken and start receding or his brother’s turn grey? The changes I observed weren’t just physical. As we talked, I wondered when my once irresponsible boys became so sensible and wise. None of it happened overnight and yet each little change was so subtle it barely was noticed. But, when I thought back to the children and young adults they once were, the change was enormous.
While both are joy and happiness are pleasurable, there seems to be a fine line between the two. Happiness is more like satisfaction. Dependent on external circumstances, it needs everything to go right or as close to right as possible. On the other hand, because joy doesn’t depend on what is happening to us or to the people we love, it is possible even when everything has gone terribly wrong. Happiness is an emotion which, like anger, sadness, fear, and jealousy, is short-lived but joy can be a permanent state of mind. Because happiness takes the short view, it’s hard to be happy in suffering. Because joy takes the long view, it can endure through suffering.
In 1976, Chuck Colson founded Prison Fellowship, the nation’s largest Christian nonprofit serving prisoners, former prisoners, and their families and acting as an advocate for criminal justice reform. Nevertheless, whenever I come across his name, I don’t think of the 36 years he spent in his ministry. Instead, I remember the ruthless man once considered Richard Nixon’s “hatchet man.” Along with being one of the Watergate Seven, Colson was known as a “dirty tricks artist” who tracked down incriminating photographs and leaked damaging and untrue rumors to discredit and blacken the reputations of political enemies. In 1974, as a new Christian, Colson pled guilty to obstruction of justice on a Watergate-related charge and served seven months in prison. It was after his release that he mobilized the Christian Church to minister to prisoners.
Devotions of the Heart 