God has a GREAT Imagination - Beetles

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Tracking God News
Looking for the character and personality of God in His creation.

Issue # 1
Editor: Ron McCluskey mailto:editor@trackinggod.com

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God has a GREAT Imagination
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God's imagination in the Bible
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Tracking God's Imagination
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A famous entomologist was once asked what he had learned from his lifelong study of
insects. He replied, "God has an inordinate fondness for beetles."
That would seem to be true, because at last count, scientists have named over 400,000
species of them. To give you an idea of how many that is, there are about 15,000 species
of birds in the world. In fact, if you lined up all species of life including bacteria, plants,
animals, worms and insects every fifth one would be a beetle!
If we were to try to come up with designs for different types of beetles, most of us could
come up with 25 different designs. Some of us could probably figure out a few hundred.
But, can you imagine the type of intelligence that it takes to design over 400,000 variations
on a theme? And each of them is perfect. They have all their parts working.
No matter how great our imagination, we would probably never think about creating
a beetle with a flame thrower in it, but that is what God did! There is a small group of
beetles called bombardier beetles. They are nothing special to look at, but God put a
very special protective mechanism in them. They have a built in flame thrower in the
back end of these beetles. They can aim it in any direction and fire it at will. It shoots
caustic chemicals at any attacker that are boiling temperature. It can shoot 20 bursts a
second.
The mechanism that shoots these hot chemicals is a marvel of design. There is a small
chamber that holds the chemicals that will eventually explode. When the beetle feels
threatened, that chamber will contract causing a small amount of these chemicals to enter
a second chamber. In that chamber, there are chemicals which cause an explosion.
At the tip of the abdomen, there is a small turret which can be pointed in any direction.
When the chemicals explode the burst through this small turret.
Once, many years ago, when people still traveled by wood burning trains, there were
two entomologists traveling in the southern United States. When the train stopped to
take on water, these men went out into a field to collect insects. When the train whistle
blew, one of the men had an insect clutched tightly in each hand. By the time he got
back to the train, it was moving. With his hands full, he could not grab onto the hand
rail and pull himself onto the train. So, without thinking, he popped one of the insects
into his mouth. It happened to be a bombardier beetle. He later wrote in his journal
that he could sympathize with any predator that tried to eat this small insect because
he immediately had a very hot burning sensation in his mouth!
It is amazing to me that God would expend the effort and planning necessary to create
these tiny creatures. They are perfect examples of miniaturization. Their tiny parts all
fitted together to make them not only survive, but thrive. It is evident that there was a lot
of loving attention given to them.

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God's imagination in the Bible
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It has been said that man's extremity is God's opportunity. That can clearly be seen in the
many ways that God delivered people in the Bible. It is a good exercise to count the
ways that God has saved people.
Some examples include parting the Red Sea with wind, providing a big fish to swallow a
drowning prophet, making 3 men fireproof and making a stone altar flammable. Is there
anything that God cannot do?
As an exercise today, make a list of all the things that God did to save His people. This
is a great faith builder. When you have a problem, you can be sure that God has enough
imagination and power to provide the answer.

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copyright 2002
Ron McCluskey
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