FROG IN THE OVEN!

‘Burrowing Frog’ by Vivevans is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Frogs LOVE water!  Their life depends on it.  They must live near a swamp, pond, marsh or a damp place because they don’t drink water like we do, they absorb water through their skin, in an area called ‘the drinking patch’ on their belly and the underside of their thighs.  They can’t just go get a cup of coffee at Starbucks like we can.  AND THEY SWALLOW WITH THEIR EYES.  They eat their prey whole and sink their eyeballs into their mouth which pushes the food down their throat!  Never seen that happen.                                                              

Anyway, the frog shown in the photo above is a ‘burrowing frog’.  These frogs burrow into the mud of a creek bed or into sand when things begin to heat up and dry up at the end of the rainy season in arid or semi-arid climates where the temperatures soar like an oven over 100 degrees for months at a time.

Talk about patience, they wait several months, and in some cases, more than a year in their burrow for the rains to return.  How can they survive that long underground without eating, drinking or moving?  It’s called ‘estivation’.  It is similar to hibernation (which they do in cold climates) see ‘Frog in a Freezer’ devo. 

A burrowing frog is able to slow its heart rate and digestive system and the burrow protects the frog from drying out from the hot sun until the next rain.  Some frogs create their own cocoon to lock in moisture!  What is really amazing is the frog does not lose muscle tone or flexibility as a result of prolonged immobility!  Now wouldn’t that be nice!  

Is your life like a dry creek bed?  Do you feel buried in the mud just waiting for the rains to come?  Take heart!  The rains have come!  In Isaiah 44:3-4, God made a promise to His servant Jacob.  It is a prophesy of what was to come to his descendants and IS NOW HERE!
‘For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants.  They will spring up like grass in a meadow, like poplar trees by flowing streams.’ HALLELUJAH!  

Jesus and His Holy Spirit are the fulfillment of that prophesy!  Jesus said. “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.  Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”  ‘By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.’ John 7:37-39. The Holy Spirit has come!  Believe in Jesus and receive the water of the Holy Spirit and you too will become a descendent of Jacob. 

And like the burrowing frog who springs up out of his burrow when God ‘pours water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground’, you will spring up out of your dry creek bed as the water of the Holy Spirit brings you life and blessings!  You too will ‘spring up like grass in a meadow, like poplar trees by flowing streams’ and you will never thirst again!

DRINK!

If you want to watch a burrowing frog emerge from the mud, click on the following link:

‘Amazing Rain Frogs/Life in Cold Blood/BBC’.