ARKANSAS RIVER SURPRISE!!!

 ‘American Paddlefish’ photo by U.S. Geological Survey. 

Do you have any idea what is lurking below the surface of the Arkansas River???
I certainly didn’t until my neighbor knocked on my door and said he had something to show me and my boys.  When we saw what was in the bed of his pick-up truck, we could not believe our eyes!  Laying there stretched from one side of the bed to the other and hanging over the side was a huge, 7-foot-long fish with a long nose, that looked like a paddle.  He said, “look what I just caught bow fishing below the dam on the Arkansas River!”  

What he caught was a paddlefish, also called a Spoonbill.  (See photo above).

Don’t worry, they won’t bite.  They don’t eat meat.  They have no teeth!  They are filter-feeders, subsisting on zooplankton, microscopic critters in the water.  All they have to do is swim with their large mouth open (awkward) and filter food through their gill rakes! 

Their rostrum, or paddle like snout has electro-receptors on both sides that allow them to detect the zooplankton’s electrical current in the water.  It also acts as a highly sensitive ‘antenna’ which helps them find food but also navigate through their environment since their eyesight is extremely poor. 

As Isaiah proclaims, ‘Once more God astounds us with wonder upon wonder’ but think about our guidance system!  For example, according to The National Institutes of Health, your hand has 17,000 touch receptors and free nerve endings in the palm alone!  The fingertips are especially sensitive with a density of about 3000 nerve endings per square inch!  
Your eyes have 100 million rods and 6 million cones to detect images and motion.

Your ears have 16,000 sensory hair cells to pick up sound waves.

Your nose can detect one trillion different odors!

All these guide us through our environment in a way far superior to a Paddlefish.  After all, we are created in the ‘image and likeness of God’!!!

AND THIS IS JUST YOUR PHYSICAL BODY!!!  If you are a Christian, God has sent His Holy Spirit to live within you!!!  Imagine that!!!

Jesus promised His disciples that after He died and was resurrected, He ‘would not leave them comfortless, He would come to them.’  And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever–the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.’  Talk about guidance, God is in you by His Spirit! 
John 14:18,16-17. NKJV.  WHAT GOOD NEWS!!!

This means that God in the form of the Holy Spirit is with you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!!!!! The scriptures tell us that the Holy Spirit is our advocate.  He is for us, not against us.  He will teach us and remind us what Jesus has said.  He will be our helper, guiding us into all truth.  He will convict us of sin, and of righteousness and of judgment.

In Psalm 46:1-3, King David says, ‘God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.’  It is certainly true today to those who have received His Holy Spirit!  He continues to say, ‘Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth gives way, and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.’

What a comforting word for today, amidst all the natural disasters surrounding us!! By His Spirit, He is ‘an ever-present help in trouble.’

He was with me when a car turned in front of me.  He delivered me from death!

He was with me and told me not to step on a pile of grass.  I would have been bitten by a copper head snake! 

He told me who to marry!  We’ve been married almost 50 years!

He was with me helping me decide what to study in graduate school…that decision brought with it my entire career in teaching ART!

We don’t fear tornados because He is our refuge.  They don’t come to my house!!!

MAKE HIM ‘EVER PRESENT’ IN YOUR LIFE!