Most of us have heard how a bat can fly about in total darkness and never hit an object that might be in its way. Experiments were tried, blindfolding these creatures and turning them loose in rooms strung with piano wire, twine and other things. The bat just flew all around these obstacles and never once touched them.
God has furnished the bat with a “radar system” far more sensitive than any that man has invented. With its mouth, a bat produces a sound so high pitched that humans cannot hear its full range. These sound waves strike objects in its path of flight and send back echoes to the bat’s ears. The echoes tell the bat how it must turn to avoid colliding with objects or with each other.
After spending perhaps 30 minutes cleaning itself, this furry little mammal usually sleeps hanging upside down with its wings draped around its body like a cloak. (They are not dirty animals as many people think.)
God has given bats a sense of approaching winter with its scarcity of food. Some migrate to warmer climates, up to 1,000 miles away. Others gorge on insects and put on a layer of fat, then find a dark place, often a cave, where they hang by their hind feet and hibernate for three to six months. During this time the fat stored in their bodies sustains them until warm weather returns. Then they become active once again and are able to find insects to eat that also have become plentiful.
Although bats are rather strange-looking creatures, they are beneficial to man in destroying vast quantities of harmful insects. It is estimated that they eat half their weight in insects in one night.
Bats are not able to question and understand their ways of life, and they are not able to develop such wonderful abilities by themselves. God is the One who has created them, and He watches over them, providing their skills and caring for them in all their unusual ways. They carry on many of their activities in the dark, and they are equipped for this. We, too, by nature love a form of darkness that shuts us out of God’s blessings: “This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (John 3:1919And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. (John 3:19)).
When the Lord Jesus came into the world, He was “the Light of the world,” and He invites everyone to come out of darkness into His wonderful light. When we accept Him as our Saviour, He delights to give us a new title - “children of light.” Then we have the privilege of shining for Him.
OCTOBER 29, 1995
ML-10/29/1995