Most people who live in the city have never had the pleasure of listening to frogs sing. During warm spring and summer nights, their chorus is delightful to hear.
Most frogs spend their lives in or near water, but some are land residents. These must seek out damp places to live, because their skin requires constant moisture. They have special glands which help keep their skin moist by supplying a coating which slows moisture evaporation. This makes their skin seem cold and wet to the touch.
Frogs have no ears, and their protruding eyes are only attracted to moving objects. However, they have sensitive organs that transmit sound, and they also have a good sense of smell. All frogs are excellent swimmers.
In parts of Africa, frogs disappear when their ponds dry up; they bury themselves in the bottom of the pond. They can exist like this for months. Then when torrential rains come and the ponds fill again, they come out of hiding. Seeing frogs after a rainstorm, superstitious people mistakenly think they have come from the sky.
The females lay thousands of eggs in the spring, floating them in water in large jelly-like masses. Warmed by the sun, the eggs soon hatch into tadpoles. The fish-like tadpoles do not look like frogs. Their fat, little bodies have long tails but no legs. Nor do they have eyelids or lungs. They remain this way for many weeks, breathing like fish through their four pairs of gills. Eventually hind legs grow—just little “buds” in front of the tail at first, but soon the front legs grow in the same way.
Then eyelids and jaws develop, and the tail gets shorter and shorter as it is absorbed into the body. Finally, when the four legs have developed, the tail is absorbed completely. The gills also disappear and lungs develop, changing it into an air-breathing frog. It announces the change by croaking, a habit it continues for the rest of its life.
Now think about this: Where frogs live in moist vegetation and cannot get to water, the eggs are laid in damp leaves or rotten wood. These do not hatch out as tadpoles but as tiny frogs, with the frog parts fully formed! It is easy to see that the Lord God, the Creator, made this special provision for these particular frogs.
As the opening verse says, the Lord God sees each part of His creation at all times and supplies even frogs and tadpoles with everything they need. King Solomon knew that God is watching over people as well and wrote, “The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good” (Proverbs 15:33The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good. (Proverbs 15:3)).
ML-07/30/2017
Set 9