Faith, hope, and jellyfish

Our family recently took a trip to the National Aquarium, where we all fell in love with a giant green sea turtle named Calypso and were amazed by the underwater antics of puffins and the above-water antics of dolphins. We saw snake-neck turtles, sting-rays, and poison dart frogs, and we dipped our fingers into shallow pools filled with horseshoe crabs and translucent jellyfish.





At the end of our visit, we stopped by a special exhibit on jellyfish, and I was sobered to read reports of their increasing numbers in the earth’s seas and oceans. Over-fishing by humans has left jellyfish with fewer natural predators, and since they can survive warmer water temperatures and lower oxygen levels than other aquatic creatures, they are thriving. Jellyfish feed on fish eggs, so they are disastrous for fish populations, and the current abundance of them functions like an “indicator light”—a warning sign that things are out of balance. My son was also tickled to learn that a certain jellyfish species (Turritopsis dohrnii) is considered immortal—after the adults propagate, they revert back into juveniles and grow up all over again—and this prompted him to sing alternate words to a favorite Bible verse song:  “Three things will last forever: faith, hope… and jellyfish!”




No one knows how long jellyfish will plague our oceans, but I am deeply glad that faith, hope, and love are here to stay. And musing upon jellyfish as a sign makes me think of other signs—not of trouble, but of hope. In a directed-study course I have been taking this fall, we have talked about how the miracles of Jesus were signs, like stop signs proclaiming, “Pay attention! The Kingdom of God is here!” During his ministry on earth, Jesus reached out to those on the margins of society—the uneducated, the outcast, the unpopular—and proclaimed the generosity of his Kingdom. He healed the sick, handicapped, and demon-possessed, and proclaimed the power of his Kingdom. He fed five thousand men (plus women and children!) with a few loaves of bread and fish and proclaimed the abundance of his Kingdom.




Thus I tune my senses to the ordinary miracles of a week, to the signs around me that God’s Kingdom is near. I soak up the glory of colorful leaves, gathered on an autumn’s walk, dipped in beeswax, and strung in front of our big windows. I rejoice to hear my small daughter belting out the word “Hallelujah” as she sings. I marvel at the way my son talks about the past like an old man (“Remember that time…?”) when the event in question happened yesterday. I breathe deep the lingering smell of sweet cooked apples from days of making applesauce. I look at the mounds of golden and red apples we harvested for free in a friend’s orchard, and I feel the discrepancy of such abundance:  not so long ago, I stood in my doorway in Tanzania and paid a thousand shillings for each treasured apple pulled from the seller’s sack.




I feel the rub of the disparity in the world, the ache of enough and not enough. We have enough food and not enough ways to spread it around; too many jellyfish and not enough sea turtles; too much hate and not enough humility. But when I am tempted to despair, I remember Jesus, how he could take just a little of something good—a smidgen of faith, an inkling of trust, a small loaf of bread—and create such wild abundance. The apostle Paul wrote that our God “is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us” (Ephesians 3:20). All that we must do is show up with what we have, like the weary, bewildered disciples, peering at the crowd of thousands and holding out to Jesus that impossibly small bit of food.


Mercifully and marvelously, in the economy of Jesus, just a little bit can be more than enough.

Comments

  1. <3 always so encouraging to read your thoughts. And SO COOL about the immortality of jelly fish!

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    1. Thanks, sweet friend! Hope you and yours are well this week!

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  2. I love your "mini-sermons" and the inspiration and always positive thinking.. greetings to your family..

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    1. Thank you, Kathy! Greetings and love to you, too!

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