The red eft–the only land animal I can think of that has vermilion as its color.
I am not going to write about current events today. Nope, I won’t do it. Our national leaders are going to Hell and no two ways about it, and anyone who wants to follow them will be sorry.
Behold the red eft. Is that gorgeous, or what? I mean, how many times do you see the color vermilion in a land animal?
But won’t that bright color make them kind of easy for predators to see and catch? No way. That color challenges a predator: “Do you feel lucky, punk?” For the red efts skin is full of toxins. The brilliant color is a warning light. “If you eat me, you will die a horrible death.”
Red efts don’t stay red forever. What they are, really, is juvenile newts. They live on land, but they grow up into water-dwelling common newts, which are really quite handsome in their own right: green with red spots on top, yellow with black spots on the bottom.
Red efts and green newts belong to that category known as God’s stuff. That’s the stuff that always works the way it’s supposed to. It works perfectly, and most of it is beautiful.
There is more life to be found in a small bucket of earth, or sea water, than we have been able to detect in all the rest of the universe. Which is not to say there is no life anywhere else in the universe: it’s God’s universe, and He can do what He pleases with it.
But we would be wise to be more thankful for what we have immediately at hand.