Creation As Favor: Devotional

“Pay attention so that creation need not play to an empty house.” — Annie Dillard

According to Leonard Sweet, author of Nudge, one of the most common phrases spoken by Jesus proves to be difficult to translate into our modern language. The King James Version translates it as, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee,” and the New International Version translates it as, “I tell you the truth.” But Sweet has settled on his own 21st Century interpretation: “Pay attention!” He argues that God is working in and through all things in our world. We simply have to heed the signs that are all around us.

Paying attention is exactly what the scientists and film-makers are doing in the unexpectedly uplifting Disney Plus documentary, The Secrets of Elephants. Specialized nighttime cameras captured a herd mourning the loss of their dominant male in a touching display of grief. Elephants coming throughout the night to pay their respects, one-by-one touching their trunks to the bull’s body.

And later film-makers captured another touching interaction between ‘toddlers’ in a sanctuary for elephant orphans. One of the orphans had been maimed by a hyena attack that left him with only half of his trunk. Without the ‘finger’ at the end of his trunk, he struggles to complete tasks that other elephants are able to maneuver with ease. In one difficult-to-watch scene, he repeatedly tries to pull a tree branch low enough to reach the leaves with his mouth, but without success.

Then something unexpected happens. In a beautiful act of compassion, a companion pulls down several small tree branches and lays them on the ground at his feet.

Creation is putting on quite a show. Are we paying attention?