The Hydra and Other Delicate Creatures

The Hydra and Other Delicate Creatures

9. The Hydra and Other Delicate Creatures

As a student in an invertebrate zoology class in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, I was scuba diving around some pilings in order to observe the creatures living under the water on the pilings. A small hydra, a most delicate, nearly transparent, creature with thin, one inch long "arms" coming out of a stalk, caught my attention. Its arms slowly waved in the currents. I suddenly "saw" in a new way the dependency of the hydra on the ocean and any food particles the water currents might bring within its grasp. It seemed helpless, and it was helpless with regard to going after food, but at the same time it was perfectly adapted to its ocean life. It was not helpless at all within the embrace of the ocean. The hydra is like the lilies of the field we are invited in Matthew 6:28 to consider "how they grow; they neither toil nor spin."

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