Diatoms

God's Creation is truly amazing. The biodiversity found in extant and extinct records boggles the curious and challenges the taxonomic tyro. We know that of the millions of species on our blue planet, only 1% are alive today. We also know that Big Industry did not extirpate the dinosaur-- Darwin's verifiable ideas are spot-on: death happens and has been doing so for quite some time now.

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/chromista/diatoms/centriclive.jpg

One of the amazing creatures we find floating in amongst the surfboarders of the world is a wee creature we collectively call diatoms. We use their corpses in impacting soil structure, industrial microfilters, or even measuring micro-optic resolution, yet the most amazing contribution is that of a photosynthetic drifter.

Diatoms are considered to be a form of glass-covered alga, a lethargic cousin of the heliozoans (who also have very cool Christmas-ornament-appearance under the microscope). What's interesting to me is that these photosynthetic protists need upwelling to stay in the euphotic zones. No current? They settle to the bottom and die. Which reminds me of: us.

In my One-Year Bible these last few weeks I've been reading through the book of Judges and I am amazed. Really. Actually shocked.

When people get away from the Current of the Holy Spirit in their life, they settle... and that is a bad thing. I read where fathers rashly make some bizarre vow to kill the first person who runs out of his house if God will give him victory--so he kills his beloved daughter, even though God had nothing to do with that-- choices made apart from the Current. Samson gives his power away like a sex-addict thinking with his reptilian brain. Benjamites gang-raping some chick to death, so her man cuts her up with a kitchen knife and sends body parts as an invitation for payback, but the Benjamites protect the perps and get pounded like the hilarious scene in flick "The Avengers", when Hulk meets Loki, then work a technicality for how to help the few survivors replace their slaughtered wives and children. Crazy.

We are ugly when we settle... even dead... when we allow distractions to take us out of the Flow that keeps us exposed to His life-giving light.

God, keep us in You; protect us from ourselves.