The truly amazing Pelican

The sky is the domain of a great multitude of flying creatures that we call birds. One of the most remarkable birds is the Pelican. Found on every continent except Antarctica, there are eight living specimens. The smallest is the Brown Pelican with a wingspan of 2 to 2.3 metres (6ft 6in to 7ft 6in); whilst the largest is probably the Great White Pelican which has a wingspan of up to 3.6 metres (11ft 8in). Yet, relative to their size they are among the lightest of birds. On land they waddle but when they take off, they become airborne with only about five flaps of their wings. Flying majestically they are very clever at saving energy. As they pass over land they use ‘thermal updrafts’ to rise to over 4,200 metres (14,000ft). Then they glide for hundreds of metres/miles searching for suitable places to forage, breed or find another ‘thermal’. By this way the pelican can stay airborne for up to 24 hours. They have a fibrous layer deep in their breast muscles that holds the wings rigidly horizontal whilst they are aloft. A further means of travel is gliding along the crests of shallow waves in calm conditions, just above the surface, taking advantage of updrafts.

Faith & Creation

All photos courtesy of Unsplash

In his letter to the Christians in Rome, the apostle Paul interspersed his writing with several doxologies. These are short, spontaneous outbursts of praise to God, arising from some statement made about Him. In one of these doxologies, Paul used a simple but sublime description of God, ‘from whom, through whom and to whom are all things.’ This formula sums up so much of what Christians believe about God and His relationship to His creation.  

We’ll concentrate on the first phrase; all things being ‘from Him’. He is the origin of all things animate and inanimate, seen and unseen. The actual mechanics of creation might be controversial, but there can be no argument among theists about the universe’s origins as having a creator. So rather than getting bogged down in the ‘when and how’ of creation, we could make useful progress by thinking rather about the ‘who and why’? Seeing God as creator – that is, in simple terms, One who made something out of nothing - puts us at odds with the famous cosmologist Prof. Stephen Hawkin of Cambridge University, whose latest M-theory outlined in his recent book ‘The Grand Design’, sees the origin of the universe as simply the solution of a set of mathematical equations. This solution postulates that the universe has up to 11 dimensions, plus time, and says we may be part of a ‘multiverse’ rather than one universe.