#24 Pacific Golden Plover

Take a look at the globe sometime and notice the distance from Alaska to Hawaii. Also note that Hawaii is out in the middle of nowhere and it would be pretty hard to find in the Pacific unless you knew exactly where you were going.

How easy would it be for a bird to hatch from its egg, have its parents leave after just a few days, fend for itself for a couple months, plump up in weight, and then take off flying to Hawaii non-stop for longer than 70 hours [1] with no guides, and not miss?

The birds that do exactly this are called Pacific Golden Plovers (Pluvialis fulva), known by natives of Hawaii as Kolea. They are small and weigh only about 8 ounces. Every year they migrate between Alaska and Hawaii or other similar routes making nearly a 2,000 mile journey without stopping or resting because they can't swim. It takes them about 70 hours each way and they lose 50% of their body weight. They are known to return to Hawaii to the exact same patch of grass year after year for up to 20 years [2]. Some return to the same backyard and are welcomed by the natives. They like front lawns, parks, ball fields, sometimes even in parking lots.

The parent Plovers live in Alaska from May to August, forage for food, mate, nest, and wait for the young to hatch. In August while the chicks are days old, the parents leave their young behind in Alaska and fly to Hawaii without them. The young have to grow and bulk up on food and water much longer. About October they leave for Hawaii. During the trip they will use up half of their body weight in energy to make the trip.

By the end of April or early May, all the Plovers will have left Hawaii and journeyed the 2,000 miles back to Alaska. For Hawaiians  the coming and going of the Plovers mark the changing of the seasons.

The Theory of Evolution is based on a process described as slow and incremental changes over long periods of time. There are no partial incremental trips from Alaska to Hawaii for a bird that can't swim. The Plover has to have eaten enough to make the trip and fly exactly to a very small target in the Pacific Ocean the very first time or else die. If it dies along the way, there is no reproduction and hence no evolution.

Darwin himself recognized the limitation of his theory and what scientific facts would invalidate it. He is quoted as saying:

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case." [3]

It would take a very, very intelligent designer to build a machine capable of flying from Alaska to Hawaii non-stop the very first time. To believe the Pacific Golden Plover happened accidentally is fantasy.

There must be a God.


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[1] https://phys.org/news/2011-06-plovers-tracked-pacific.html

[2] https://phys.org/news/2011-06-plovers-tracked-pacific.html

[3] Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species: A Facsimile of the First Edition, Harvard University Press, 1964, p. 189.

#23 Children and Parents

We are all children of our parents. Inside us are very powerful instincts to have a relationship with our parents. Automatic bonding takes place without a conscious decision.

Even many children who are adopted would go to great lengths to try to learn who their real biological parents are.

We are innately constituted in our very being to having a loving relationship with our parents. This is a win-win relationship for everyone. If our parents are mentally, emotionally, and spiritually healthy and we are in a loving relationship with them, then the odds are huge that we will be healthy also. Even the community around us will benefit.

But this is also a lose-lose proposition. If the parents are immature, then they become an upper limit on their children’s maturity. If the parents are abusive, then the odds are that the children will also become abusive.

The parent-child relationship is so much of an underlying foundation for our existence that if we are abandoned emotionally and spiritually as children, we will have serious psychological consequences and may even never recover.

The highest revealed understanding of the nature of God is that of a loving Father and Mother, i.e. parents. 

If one does not have God in their life, they are abandoned like a child. He or she is consciously or unconsciously on a search to fill the empty space in that deep inner part of their being.

Many substitutes appear such as money, knowledge, power, sex, or fame which seem for a while to fill the emptiness. But none of them will ever truly satisfy the place reserved for God in our lives. They eventually will be recognized for what they are, false gods.

Sadness, emptiness, bitterness, and resentment, and usually pain are all the results of chasing after these false gods.

It’s either a win-win or a lose-lose for each person having a relationship with God. We are designed to exist in a loving relationship with God, our eternal parents. Nothing else will ultimately satisfy our hearts.

There must be a God.

PS:  Allow me to share the final two paragraphs from a recent book I read, Life In Eternity.

“…as I looked at the sleepy faces of those sitting and standing all around me, I gasped in instantaneous tears. For as I discerned each person’s face -- whether that of a child, a young adult, an older man, or a beautiful woman, as well as the faces of many other people from all walks of life -- I became instantly conscious of two extraordinary realities. In the first nanosecond, I saw each human face expressing the sense of being lost and all the myriad pain of disorientation, and the ongoing suffering involved in the lifetime struggle to overcome an unknown amnesia and to live a conscientious life. In the next nanosecond, I saw how much, how desperately, how passionately God loves each person, how tremendously much God longed to be able to assuage each man’s and each woman’s pain, how much God desired to restore to each person the sense, the living reality of his or her own true identity as an authentic son or daughter of God -- and to reassure each person that they were not only immeasurably loved by God but, as God’s child, he or she had a truly cosmic identity as a Being of LOVE, potentially capable of exercising unlimited power to create. I felt so much of God’s heart to rescue us, to embrace each of us, so much of God’s yearning to reassure us, to heal us -- so that we could finally be immersed in the cosmic joy that in our original birthright.

Slowly, as I stepped back from this realization, I stopped crying. And I simply knew then that, however many dozens, or hundreds, or thousands, or millions of years it might take, God would walk with us every step of the way, that God would recover all of us as His children, who could finally and triumphantly declare: WE HAVE AWAKENED! WE DO KNOW WHO WE ARE! WE ARE THE SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF GOD!” [1]

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[1] Life In Eternity: Human Beings in the Spirit World, by Kerry Pobanz. 2012, ISBN 978-1-105-65604-0