Thank God for our Senses!
With Thanksgiving Day just two days away I have been spending some time reflecting on the things I am grateful for. This may sound strange but one of the main things I am thankful for is that I have so many things to be grateful for. I could not begin to list the many ways God has blessed me in my life. Obviously in my Seeing Creation blogs I tend to focus on the world of nature and in this area there are innumerable things for which I offer thanks. I am so thankful for the beauty of God’s Creation, for inspiring sunrises and sunsets, majestic mountains and mysterious deserts, all creatures great and small, towering trees and miniscule flowers, star-filled skies and the northern lights, flowing rivers and raging oceans, and on and on I could go. For years I have been careful to express my appreciation to God for the endless wonders of nature. What I have not been so careful to do is voice my gratitude for the senses God gave us to experience these wonders.
Growing up I was taught that humans typically had five senses: sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing. Students today learn that there are other senses beyond these five. All the senses we have been given enrich our lives and enable us not only to survive but to enjoy the world around us. My enjoyment of nature goes well beyond just seeing the beauty around me—it is enhanced by all the other senses as well. I am thankful for the smells of nature, even if all of them are not pleasant. I am thankful for the sounds of nature. My senses enable me to experience nature in a holistic manner. Here lately I have been thanking God more often for my physical senses and asking God to help me use them more fully and effectively.
I probably should go on to tell you why I have been doing this more often lately. A few months ago my friend, Rob Sheppard, sent me a book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Ed Yong, called An Immense World. The subtitle of the book is “How Animal Senses Reveal The Hidden Realms Around Us.” I don’t read a lot of weighty science books but I am so glad I read this one. It shook my world. In chapter after chapter Yong reveals how other creatures experience life through the senses they have developed. He points out right from the start that though many animals share some of the same senses we do that does not mean that they experience their world in the same way we do with those senses. In so many ways they don’t. A lot of creatures even have senses that we humans do not and what they do with them is almost unbelievable. An Immense World is one of the most fascinating and mind-blowing books I have ever read. I learned so much reading this book and even found reading it to be a worshipful and spiritual experience. It certainly is not a “religious” book, far from it. It is, once again, a science book. But page after page I found myself saying “Wow!” out loud and praising God for being such an awesome Creator. I couldn’t help but echo the psalmist’s sentiments: “How great are your works, LORD, how profound your thoughts!” (Ps. 92:5)
Learning about the senses of other creatures and how they use them also made me appreciate the ones we have been given. They should definitely not be taken for granted. I will be giving thanks for mine this Thanksgiving and I encourage you to do the same. Happy Thanksgiving and God bless!
–Chuck