Marveling At God’s Creation

Wednesday, October 22, 2025

War, protests, TDS, government shutdown, Democratic candidates wishing death on their opponents – so many stories to choose from.  But every now and then a story comes along that just makes you sit back and marvel at God’s creation.  I ran into one this morning.

Polar regions are known for swarming insects.  The warm season is so short in those regions that the insects get seriously busy when they have the chance.  Videos from Siberia and Alaska make the point.  I visited Iceland a few years ago and discovered the phenomena first hand.  It is intense.

That’s not mist – it’s bugs

That experience involved a breed of mayfly in one of the intense volcanic areas on the island.  The bugs were harmless enough but they were so thick that simply by walking around they entered your nasal passages (or your mouth if you dared open it,) your ears and appeared as a sort of fog.  You could not help but be annoyed, while fascinated at the same time.

So out of Iceland this morning comes news of the discovery of mosquitos.

Insect enthusiast Bjorn Hjaltason encountered the mosquitoes over several nights last week while using wine-soaked ropes to observe moths, local media reported.

Mr Hjaltason found two female mosquitoes and one male which were later confirmed to be Culiseta annulata, one of few species that can successfully survive winter.

Iceland was one of only two mosquito-free havens in the world prior to the discovery, partly due to its cold climate. The only other recorded mosquito-free zone is Antarctica.

And so my imagination runs wild imagining that swarm not as the harmless mayfly, but as the biting, stinging mosquito (as experienced in Siberia and Alaska) and I shutter.  But it also puts me in mind of a passage from C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity:

I have been warned not even to raise the question of animal immortality, lest I find myself ‘in company with all the old maids’. I have no objection to the company. I do not think either virginity or old age contemptible, and some of the shrewdest minds I have met inhabited the bodies of old maids. Nor am I greatly moved by jocular enquiries such as ‘Where will you put all the mosquitoes?’ — a question to be answered on its own level by pointing out that, if the worst came to the worst, a heaven for mosquitoes and a hell for men could very conveniently be combined. The complete silence of Scripture and Christian tradition on animal immortality is a more serious objection; but it would be fatal only if Christian revelation showed any signs of being intended as a système de la nature answering all questions. But it is nothing of the sort: the curtain has been rent at one point, and at one point only, to reveal our immediate practical necessities and not to satisfy our intellectual curiosity.

Which raises questions about whether those mosquito infested polar region like Siberia and Alaska are in fact hell on earth – and is Satan busy converting Iceland into the same?

It must be remembered that Mere Christianity was, originally, a series of radio lectures Lewis delivered on the BBC.  He was having some fun here, much like the host whenever he pretends to have been in every band they ever mention on the show.

And, of course, the 60 Minutes piece on Siberian mosquito swarms and the Beeb story on the discovery of Icelandic mosquitos both are busy screaming “climate change!”  But then Siberian mosquito swarms were found in the 1920’s when searching for the Tunguska meteor impact.  So who really knows.  Icelandic tourism has been booming – that mosquitos made it there is unsurprising.  And finding a few in one event is insufficient data to say they are colonizing.

But there is an alternate way to look at it, a way hinted at in the Lewis quote.  God is at work – always.  Everything serves a purpose – God’s purpose.  My email devotional this morning discusses finding joy in difficult circumstances.  I see something like this – like mosquitos making their way to Iceland – and I find a reminder that God is at work, even when I am fighting the urge to scratch.