The Tangled Bank and the Psalmist's Song

On November 24, 1859, John Murray's publishing house in London released 1,250 copies of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Every copy was spoken for before the day was out. The book would ignite fierce debate for generations. Yet what is sometimes overlooked is the wonder that drove Darwin to write it.

During his five-year voyage aboard HMS Beagle, the young naturalist had been staggered by what he found — orchids engineered to lure specific insects, barnacles of bewildering variety, finches on the Galápagos Islands whose beaks were shaped to match their particular food sources. In the book's famous closing paragraph, Darwin described "an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about," and marveled that from so simple a beginning "endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

Whatever one makes of Darwin's conclusions, his starting point was sheer astonishment at the abundance of life. The psalmist knew that same astonishment: "How many are your works, LORD! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures" (Psalm 104:24).

Wonder is where science and worship share a common doorstep. The next time you kneel in a garden or stand at the ocean's edge, let the sheer profusion of living things do what it has always done — turn your gaze upward toward the One whose wisdom made them all.