My son lives next door. He literally puts me to shame with his meticulous lawn care. His yard looks like the eighteenth hole at Augusta National Golf Club! By contrast, mine looks like the local farmer's hay field.
Every year, he seeds it, fertilizes it, waters it, manicures it, cuts it, rakes it, stripes it, and generally pampers it like a little baby! And although I could never be certain; I’d almost swear that he talks to it, encouraging it to grow and flourish and amaze all who pass by!
In the process, around two or three times a year, he goes around his property spraying weed-killer. As he does, in order to mark exactly where he has sprayed, he adds a hint of blue dye to his weed-killer. For the next few days, little blue patches dot his yard.
As a result, while one is accustomed to seeing a vibrant lawn full of Kentucky 31 Fescue at his residence for much of the year, ever so often, albeit briefly, one sees instead an overabundance of blue spots amidst the sea of green. A few days thereafter, the patches of azure blue fade to ghostly white before they are finally subsumed within an emerald ocean of grass.
I thought about all these things this week when I read about a fisherman up in Alaska who reeled in a fish that was, of all things, bright blue in color - at least on the inside! According to posts he shared on Facebook and Instagram, Joe Chmeleck, owner of The Lodge at Otter Cove, in Homer, Alaska, reeled in a stunning “Rock Greenling” late last month.
The specimen, known taxonomically as Hexagrammos lagocephalus, was a ray-finned marine fish that is typically found only along the northern Pacific Coast. The species has a vibrant, "mottled" orange, speckled skin that helps it to blend into rocky cover along the ocean bottom. But on the inside, by contrast, it has a totally blue flesh.
According to Chmeleck: “Went out fishing today and caught a rock greenling … The flesh is blue. It turns white when you cook it. Mother nature is incredible.” The news article, written by Cortney Moore and published on Fox News on September 21, 2023, contains a picture showing the startling difference between the fish’s exterior orange-speckled scales and its interior blue flesh.
In a statement, Chmeleck said the good news in all of this is that the flesh, when cooked, turns from blue to a more appealing off-white. He added that it is also quite delicious, tasting a lot like trout.
A mottled appearance as a result of a stressful life spent hiding among the rocks for protection and more than a little blue on the inside! If that is not a picture of many human beings, then I do not know what is!
It might even be a picture of you, my friend. If so, then don’t despair. I do have some good news for you. Following the storyline, all it takes to get over the blues is facing a little heat! Thereafter, things are not nearly as blue as they once may have seemed.
I know that in my own case, very often whenever I have been down about something, it was often because I was also dreading facing up to some given issue, matter, or concern. And yet, even if facing whatever it happened to be that I was up against was difficult, the truth is that once I did face the heat, as it were, my blues all tended to melt away!
The Apostle Peter apparently understood this principle. In the fifth chapter of his First New Testament Epistle (verses 8-11), he admonished his fellow believers to stand firm in the midst of troubles, telling them that after they had suffered a little while, “the God of all grace”, who called them “to His eternal glory in Christ, would personally restore them and make them strong, firm and steadfast.”
The Apostle James understood this as well. In his New Testament epistle (chapter 1, verses 2-4), he writes:
“Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing”.
The same seems to be have been true for the Apostle Paul, who told the believers at Corinth (II Corinthians, chapter 4, verse 17): “… Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”
It seems, then, that facing a little heat is not such a bad thing. Doing so changes us – quite literally from the inside out! For in the process, the blues developed over a lifetime of hiding from difficulty give way to the whiteness, the fulness, and the sweetness that always accompanies the business of purification!
Giving up the blues of today for the green of tomorrow is well worth it, even if it means enduring a short period of white heat. My son’s yard demonstrates this. More to the point, the Word of God affirms this. And such as it is, my own personal experience does as well!
SOURCES:
STORY: https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/fisherman-alaska-reels-catch-bright-blue-inside-pretty-crazy.
SEE ALSO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_greenling.
NOTE: A similar story, reporting the catch of a fish with an 'extremely rare' blue-mouth in Virginia was posted back on July 20 of this year. Cf.: https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/virginia-fisherman-catches-extremely-rare-blue-mouth-fish-wild-genetic-pigment-mutation.
SCRIPTURES:
https://biblehub.com/niv/1_peter/5.htm;
https://biblehub.com/nlt/james/1.htm;
https://biblehub.com/2_corinthians/4-17.htm.
Every year, he seeds it, fertilizes it, waters it, manicures it, cuts it, rakes it, stripes it, and generally pampers it like a little baby! And although I could never be certain; I’d almost swear that he talks to it, encouraging it to grow and flourish and amaze all who pass by!
In the process, around two or three times a year, he goes around his property spraying weed-killer. As he does, in order to mark exactly where he has sprayed, he adds a hint of blue dye to his weed-killer. For the next few days, little blue patches dot his yard.
As a result, while one is accustomed to seeing a vibrant lawn full of Kentucky 31 Fescue at his residence for much of the year, ever so often, albeit briefly, one sees instead an overabundance of blue spots amidst the sea of green. A few days thereafter, the patches of azure blue fade to ghostly white before they are finally subsumed within an emerald ocean of grass.
I thought about all these things this week when I read about a fisherman up in Alaska who reeled in a fish that was, of all things, bright blue in color - at least on the inside! According to posts he shared on Facebook and Instagram, Joe Chmeleck, owner of The Lodge at Otter Cove, in Homer, Alaska, reeled in a stunning “Rock Greenling” late last month.
The specimen, known taxonomically as Hexagrammos lagocephalus, was a ray-finned marine fish that is typically found only along the northern Pacific Coast. The species has a vibrant, "mottled" orange, speckled skin that helps it to blend into rocky cover along the ocean bottom. But on the inside, by contrast, it has a totally blue flesh.
According to Chmeleck: “Went out fishing today and caught a rock greenling … The flesh is blue. It turns white when you cook it. Mother nature is incredible.” The news article, written by Cortney Moore and published on Fox News on September 21, 2023, contains a picture showing the startling difference between the fish’s exterior orange-speckled scales and its interior blue flesh.
In a statement, Chmeleck said the good news in all of this is that the flesh, when cooked, turns from blue to a more appealing off-white. He added that it is also quite delicious, tasting a lot like trout.
A mottled appearance as a result of a stressful life spent hiding among the rocks for protection and more than a little blue on the inside! If that is not a picture of many human beings, then I do not know what is!
It might even be a picture of you, my friend. If so, then don’t despair. I do have some good news for you. Following the storyline, all it takes to get over the blues is facing a little heat! Thereafter, things are not nearly as blue as they once may have seemed.
I know that in my own case, very often whenever I have been down about something, it was often because I was also dreading facing up to some given issue, matter, or concern. And yet, even if facing whatever it happened to be that I was up against was difficult, the truth is that once I did face the heat, as it were, my blues all tended to melt away!
The Apostle Peter apparently understood this principle. In the fifth chapter of his First New Testament Epistle (verses 8-11), he admonished his fellow believers to stand firm in the midst of troubles, telling them that after they had suffered a little while, “the God of all grace”, who called them “to His eternal glory in Christ, would personally restore them and make them strong, firm and steadfast.”
The Apostle James understood this as well. In his New Testament epistle (chapter 1, verses 2-4), he writes:
“Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing”.
The same seems to be have been true for the Apostle Paul, who told the believers at Corinth (II Corinthians, chapter 4, verse 17): “… Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”
It seems, then, that facing a little heat is not such a bad thing. Doing so changes us – quite literally from the inside out! For in the process, the blues developed over a lifetime of hiding from difficulty give way to the whiteness, the fulness, and the sweetness that always accompanies the business of purification!
Giving up the blues of today for the green of tomorrow is well worth it, even if it means enduring a short period of white heat. My son’s yard demonstrates this. More to the point, the Word of God affirms this. And such as it is, my own personal experience does as well!
SOURCES:
STORY: https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/fisherman-alaska-reels-catch-bright-blue-inside-pretty-crazy.
SEE ALSO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_greenling.
NOTE: A similar story, reporting the catch of a fish with an 'extremely rare' blue-mouth in Virginia was posted back on July 20 of this year. Cf.: https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/virginia-fisherman-catches-extremely-rare-blue-mouth-fish-wild-genetic-pigment-mutation.
SCRIPTURES:
https://biblehub.com/niv/1_peter/5.htm;
https://biblehub.com/nlt/james/1.htm;
https://biblehub.com/2_corinthians/4-17.htm.