The Hydra and Other Delicate Creatures

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As a student in an invertebrate zoology class in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, I was scuba diving around some pilings to observe the creatures living under the water on the pilings. A colony of hydra, a most delicate, small, nearly transparent creature with thin, long “arms” coming out of a “stalk,” caught my attention. Its arms slowly waved in the currents. It seemed helpless and vulnerable as it could not move from the piling to search for food. How could such a delicate creature survive? I suddenly realized it was not helpless at all within the embrace of the ocean. The ocean currents brought food particles that the hydra could grasp. The hydra is like the lilies of the field we are invited in Matthew 6:28 to consider “how they grow; they neither toil nor spin.”