{"id":39729,"date":"2017-08-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-08-14T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/whales-mysteries-of-gods-creation\/"},"modified":"2017-08-14T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-08-14T00:00:00","slug":"whales-mysteries-of-gods-creation","status":"publish","type":"sermon-illustrations","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/whales-mysteries-of-gods-creation\/","title":{"rendered":"Whales: Mysteries of God’s Creation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Think for a moment about the mysteries of just one of God's creatures—a whale. These big, beautiful creatures spend 95 percent of their lives in the ocean, one of the deepest and darkest places we know about. And without warning, they pull 30,000 pounds of blubber against gravity and leap out of the water for unexplainable reasons. Some baby whales gain 100 pounds an hour while nursing. The song of a humpback whale, lasting for 10-20 minutes and being repeated for hours at a time, is produced for no apparent reason. Biologists speculate it may be related to mating, but truthfully no is quite sure. The reason they breach is also a mystery. For show? For mating? For fun? There are speculations, but no one really knows why.<\/p>\n\n

Behold them for a second and you feel helpless, out of control; not the terrible kind of helplessness, but the beautiful kind where we feel small and God feels big, and the mysteries of the world are acceptable to be unexplained.<\/p>\n\n

Writer Philip Hoare tried to describe his sense of awe as a huge finback whale swam underneath his ocean vessel:<\/p>\n\n

\n

In that one motion, my entire presence is undermined. I feel, rather than see, this eighty-foot animal swimming below. Knowing it is there tugs at my gut, and something inside makes me want to plunge in and dive with it to some unfathomable depth where no one would ever find us.<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[410],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3385,3415,3465,3711,3713,4064,4329,4369,4414,4526,4677,4837,5290,5297,5305],"tax_ctp_topics":[],"class_list":["post-39729","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-adoration","tax_ctp_tags-animals","tax_ctp_tags-awe","tax_ctp_tags-creation","tax_ctp_tags-creator","tax_ctp_tags-glory-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-knowing-god","tax_ctp_tags-life","tax_ctp_tags-majesty-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-nature","tax_ctp_tags-praise","tax_ctp_tags-reverence","tax_ctp_tags-wonder","tax_ctp_tags-works-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-worship"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"\nWhales: Mysteries of God's Creation - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/whales-mysteries-of-gods-creation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Whales: Mysteries of God's Creation - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Think for a moment about the mysteries of just one of God's creatures—a whale. 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