Every creature has God-given instincts, enabling it to survive and prosper even in hazardous conditions. What’s more, the instincts are already present when the creature is born and are not something that has to be developed, although the instincts do grow keener as they are used. Evidence of this is perhaps more noticeable in birds, fish, animals and insects than in other living things, but all have been well supplied with instincts by the Creator, according to their particular conditions of life.
One of the most outstanding examples of instincts is the migration of birds, which we have explored in past issues. The more we learn of their long migratory flights so precisely taken over prairies, mountains and oceans and in all kinds of weather, the more we are amazed at the instincts provided by the Creator, enabling them to complete these flights. Or consider the lovely monarch butterflies. The adults fly each summer from Mexico and California up into Canada and Alaska, lay their eggs and then die. But as the following winter approaches, the young butterflies, which have never been beyond the place of their birth, migrate south in huge numbers to the very trees that their parents left many months earlier.
We could also look at the great distances whales migrate, or the long travels each year of caribou, antelope, yaks, gnu, salmon, eels and other creatures throughout the world. All these migrations, and many, many others, are guided by God-given instincts and repeated faithfully by each new generation. The most intensive study of researchers cannot explain how these migrations can take place so accurately, but all we need to know is that they are part of God’s creation, and He has provided these creatures with the instincts that bring about their travels.
Instincts work in other ways as well. Here are two that we humans use day after day. The blinking of your eye as something suddenly approaches it is one, and the immediate raising of your arm to fend off an unexpected threat when there is not time to do anything else is another. Can you come up with some others?
Wild animals have been given an instinct to avoid poisonous things, such as certain mushrooms, berries and roots. A deer, for instance, will eat leaves from bushes all around an oleander bush, but instinct tells it to leave that poisonous bush alone. Humans do not need this instinct since we can be taught what is poisonous, because God has given us the intelligence for this. His careful provisions for all His creatures, including humans, remind us that “He hath made the earth by His power, He hath established the world by His wisdom” (Jeremiah 10:1212He hath made the earth by his power, he hath established the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heavens by his discretion. (Jeremiah 10:12)).
(to be continued)
ML-08/22/2010