“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon
in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.” Matthew 6:28-29
There are about 23,000 varieties of orchids. God must have been smiling while He designed these flowers. Some look like butterflies and others like braying donkeys with big ears. The flying duck orchid entices an insect to land on its scented head and then flips the visitor onto its back so that it picks up the pollen before moving on. The Lilliputian orchid is smaller than a pin, while a Cattleya species grows in huge clumps high up in the trees of Venezuela.
Some orchids look like a bushy-bearded hillbilly, and caterpillars like to crawl through the beard to pick up pollen for the next flower.
Hummingbirds pollinate a little orange gnome looking character with a big hat. They find the nectar in the flower’s mouth. An ugly black orchid that looks and smells like a female wasp is pollinated by a male wasp.
Madagascar has a white orchid that holds its nectar at the end of a foot-long spur. Scientists looked for years to find out what bird or
insect could pollinate such a flower. They finally saw a huge moth with a foot-long proboscis that could unroll to drink the nectar.
The Peruvian bucket orchid doesn’t look pretty, but it has an ingenious design. The insect lands on the scented, waxy lip; it then slips off
into a bowl of liquid. Unable to fly out, it swims down to a little trap door and, as it wiggles through, it picks up a bead of pollen for the next flower. Isn’t God amazing?
Dearest Lord, what a wonder You are! Thank You for displaying Your handiwork all around us so that we can better see who You are.
Open our eyes so that we can better see You.
– Sue Carlisle
Council Fire is a collaboration with Intertribal Life Ministries and Native Evangelical Fellowship of Canada.
The Council Fire Daily Devotional Book Set is available on the Intertribal Life Ministries website.
Learn more about Council Fire at councilfire365.org