Genesis 1:20-23

Genesis 1:20-23
Contemporary English Version (CEV)

  Here, God chooses to fill the earth with life.  It always amazes me how thorough God is here.  Even around the deep-ocean vents, God creates animals that can be sustained there.  God fills ever corner of the earth with life, from the largest elephant to the smallest bacteria.  He creates the whales to play in the sea and the cheetah to run in the wild, and some of these animals are so beautiful.
  There is so much abundance and beauty in nature.  Humans have spent much of the past killing and destroying, often for no good reason, and we lose the ability to marvel as the clouds of passenger pigeons or the bison clogging the way through.  We see them as creatures in the way, but really they are examples of God's abundance and the freedom God gives us, the same abundance and freedom out of which God's love pours down to us.
  So when we marvel at creation, may we recall the gift of the Creator.