Regarding Blind, Drain-Bamaged, Woodpeckers

Then God said, "Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens." God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth." So the evening and the morning were the fifth day. Gen. 1:20-23

I have a confession to make - I get easily discouraged and frustrated!

I was spending my quiet time in our hot tub on our deck last Wednesday morning, wrestling with those familiar emotions - "Mike, pity party of one" - when I just stopped to hear God's voice. Instead, I heard the loud cacophony of birds. A lot of birds. The more I listened, the more variety I heard. As I listened some more, I could identify the sound of a woodpecker in the distance.

Now I'm not a birder (I could probably visually identify less than a dozen different birds by name), so I have no idea what birds I was listening to or I would list them. They are not the point of this blog anyway. Well, not all of them.

I was trying to focus on that still, small voice of God and I was getting really irritated with all the noise. And that stupid woodpecker! The more I tried to tune it out, the more my mind seemed to focus on it instead. You've had that happen before; the speaker at the conference who has an annoying tic/gesture/saying that they just - keep -on - doing/saying. The more you tell yourself not to focus on it, the more you are drawn in. You can't take your eyes off it. You hear the offending phrase each and every time it's uttered: "um", "you know", "OK". And it drives you crazy. That's what the woodpecker was doing to me!

Then it hit me - that woodpecker was doing what woodpeckers have been designed to do! And it brought to mind several questions that made me say, "I wonder ..." It also drove home the difference in perspective between the evolutionists and creationists.

Here are the questions I had; I wonder if you share them. (That wasn't one of my original "I wonder" questions, but we can add it to the list).

1. How many woodpeckers decided slamming their heads into a tree might be a good way to grab dinner before they "evolved" the capacity to do so? Can you imagine the number of blind, brain damaged, broken-beaked woodpeckers running around.

2. How long had the woodpeckers' capacity to slam their heads into a tree to grab dinner "evolved" before the first woodpecker tried it? Again, after watching a few of it's fellow woodpeckers becoming blind, brain damaged and broken-beaked, what woodpecker decided they had the courage to try it again? Or the stupidity?

3. How many mama (insert bird type here) had to have the conversation with their young ones, "If Jr. Woodpecker decided to jump off a bridge, would you jump off too?", in order to keep their young 'uns from slamming their heads into a tree to grab dinner?

4. Of the necessary components, which incredible design "evolved" first: the brain structure that keeps the woodpecker from brain damage, or the musculature that acts as a shock absorber to keep the brain from sloshing around?

5. What were wood peckers called before woodpeckers could peck wood?

Doesn't it make sense when you think about it that the woodpecker was designed to do what woodpeckers are designed to do from the beginning? That's exactly what God says happened in Genesis 1 - "every winged bird according to its kind

The other birds would never, and should never, attempt to do what the woodpecker does! Where a beautiful bluebird would, at the very least get a headache from pounding it's head against a tree, God has formed the woodpecker with a variety of impressive structural features that enable it to do what it does. How many bluebirds do you suppose suffered before they decided they weren't meant to evolve the ability to peck trees?

Just wondering ...