I’d been looking for someone to write an article to complement Daniel Leonard’s poem about whale falls, but I didn’t mention the subject when I pitched Dorothy Boorse an article about mosquitoes. In her reply, she mentioned in passing—in all caps with two exclamation marks—how excited she was that that she’d recently seen a dead whale. As a middle-class white dude with a great job, I get self-conscious about loudly proclaiming, “Jehovah Jireh! The Lord will provide!” But Jehovah really does jireh, as this issue repeatedly attests.
A dead whale is one of those mysterious ways that God provides. But it usually looks to me like a corpse, a sad end. I need biologists like Boorse, poets like Leonard, and a magazine like The Behemoth to show me that it’s much, much more than that. As Mark Galli’s essay in this issue also demonstrates, creation is so much bigger and so much better than I imagine. And God is greater still. “He gives food to every creature. His love endures forever,” the psalmist writes in Psalm 136:25. And, in slightly different words, in Psalm 145:15–16. And Psalm 104:27. I need even more reminders than these.
Like right now. Today we’re saying goodbye to Andie Roeder Moody, who has been The Behemoth’s assistant editor since its planning stages. I’ll forego the ill-considered whale fall analogies I tried in earlier drafts of this editor’s note and just get to the point: Andie is awesome and her new employer, North Park University, is about to be very blessed. We’re lamenting her departure. But this issue has already helped me remember God’s continued provision for her, for us, for this magazine, and for others. I hope you experience something similar as you read on.
Ted Olsen is editor of The Behemoth and tweets @tedolsen.
