Inexplicable Mysteries

I’ll never forget the first time I saw salmon making their way up a stream to spawn. That stream in Washington State was absolutely crowded with the beautiful, large fish and resembled a freeway in rush hour.

Somehow, salmon navigate back to the very stream in which they were born in order to spawn. Scientists believe salmon use the earth’s magnetic field to guide them, and being euryhaline creatures, they are able to thrive in both salt water and fresh water. But perhaps even more amazing is the experience of the longfin eel, which leaves its home in the waters of New Zealand to travel almost 1,500 miles (2,414 kilometers) to the ocean surrounding the Pacific Island nation of Tonga.

Once there, the longfin eel lays its eggs, which are then carried for many months by ocean currents back to New Zealand, where baby eels are born.

Unlike the salmon, which travels back to the place it was born in order to spawn, the longfin eel swims great distances to a place it has never been so it can reproduce. Year after year, this process continues.

Longfin eels may live for more than one hundred years, their life cycle challenging scientists to provide an explanation for their incredible behavior.

The inexplicable mysteries of nature direct us to nature’s Designer, the one true God whose creativity reveals much about His character.

If the only flowers in the world were roses and tulips, it would still be a very beautiful world, and we would see in those flowers unmistakable evidence of God’s love of beauty and His desire to enrich our lives.

But along with roses and tulips is an almost endless variety of flowers and plants. Trees of every kind, dogs of different shapes and sizes, and people of varied colors who speak different languages all tell us that God is the God of creation. He intentionally made this world, and He beautifies it to draw our attention to Himself.