I recently visited an aquarium near the coast, and I was amazed at all the variety I saw floating before my eyes! Graceful angelfish fluttering their fins, small pink fish darting about in groups of three or four, sea turtles swimming up near the top of the huge tank, sharks drifting ominously in and out of small caves at the very bottom. And not just fish, but birds too. My favorites were a small American kestrel and a large roseate spoonbill. I even got to hear the call of a barred owl–and then I was able to identify that call when I heard it after dark a few nights later.
I was reminded again what a master artist our Creator God is. Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “Pied Beauty” has always captured my imagination with its descriptions of the multihued, variegated, surprising, and strange works of His hands. Hopkins even includes God’s fish and birds: “rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim” and “finches’ wings.” After describing the infinite variety in His creation, Hopkins ends with the lines: “He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.”
What a comfort to know that the inventive God who gives us the gift of invention–the God who is endlessly creative–is also unchanging in His essential nature. He is always present, always faithful, always good, always powerful, always wise, and always at work behind the scenes of our lives with immeasurable skill. His altogether lovely character is perfect and beyond any possibility of faltering or failing. My heart resonates with Hopkins in his love for all the “dappled things” I see around me in the natural world. And yet I’m so thankful that in His essence, our Creator God is ever one and the same.