“Do you know when the mountain goats give birth?” (Job 39:1)

When your boss yells asking why he has has told you ‘a million times’ to send the report in vain, it doesn’t necessarily mean your inbox is showing 1million emails from him.

It’s a rhetoric question, and rhetoric questions are meant to provoke urgent, even serious, contemplation.

We could say the same with Job, he was no zoologist, yet God (long before Google) chose to remind him about who really is in charge – in light of the old man’s grumblings.

Just like with the “birds of the air, ” (Matt 6:26) the donkey on colt near Jerusalem (Matt 21:2), or the coin in the fish mouth (Matt 17:7) , God is in the business of calling us out especially when we lose his grasp of who he is, through nature.

Because the wonder of nature is often lost on us; we who prefer to gaze upon notifications as we drive past Karuma falls, we who scroll longer than we gaze at a blade of grass. God is always drumming it in with reminders, I run this universe , I run this Universe  – and you don’t!

Look at the birds of the air, the Lillie’s of the field, and sometimes he simply asks, “Do you know when the wild goats give birth? Have you watched as deer are born in the wild?” 

The answer is obviously No – and we might even add- Lord, we haven’t even exactly encountered a mountain goat, some of us barely know what it looks like!

Oh that nature will always remind, remind our often pre-occupied and plugged-in selves, about the beauty of a magnificent God, as often revealed in waterfalls, wood forests, in moonlights and  mountain goats!