Yesterday I had an opportunity to take some extended time to be with God and spend time in the Word. It was a cool morning, so I spent some time with Colossians and a warm cup of coffee. In the afternoon, it became a beautiful sunny day so I made my way through downtown Dallas to a local establishment where I got a chance to meet a girl named Jenny. Well, I shouldn’t say girl really, Jenny is 32 years old… and quite different from anyone else I met yesterday. Jenny has had a hard life… she is wrinkled far more than you might expect from years outdoors in the hot sun. Jenny is overweight, significantly bigger than most girls her age. Last year, she witnessed the death of her best friend of 5 years. Life for Jenny has not been an easy one recently.
But something about Jenny amazed me. I don’t think she noticed me staring, because I think there were others that were staring at her too. But there was something about this 32 year old, heavyset girl that made me wonder at God’s unique creation.
If you haven’t guessed by now… something is very different about Jenny. You see, Jenny weighs about ten thousand pounds. Jenny eats between two hundred and three hundred pounds of food a day. God really had an imagination when he made her.
Jenny is the African Elephant at the Dallas Zoo. As I watched her yesterday, I had to chuckle about how God made her. So huge, and yet so capable. I watched as she took an entire bunch of bananas from her trainer in her trunk and gobbled them up (peels and all) in one bite. How she played with a giant ball, using her trunk to fling it into the air, and how she used her huge ears like giant fans. Trumpeting through her snout and spraying water like a firehose.
If God doesn’t seem creative to you this week, or big enough to tackle your toughest problems… I suggest spending more time with the elephants.
