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People who visit the Galapagos Islands are often entranced by the “celebrity” creatures that live there.
I was certainly among the entranced when I paid a visit last week.
The Galapagos is an archipelago of 18 volcanic islands of varying sizes dotting the Pacific less than 600 miles from the South American mainland. Because of their almost complete isolation from the rest of the world, and the fact that human beings have been dropping in only for the past few centuries, the islands have become home to a number of “endemic” or found-nowhere-else species.
There are the famed Galapagos tortoises, enormous reptiles that can tip the scales at 900 pounds and outlive any of the humans who pause to snap their pictures.
There are the marine iguanas, the world’s only known ocean-feeding iguana species, with their sometimes vibrant colors and dramatic spikes that make them stars of schlocky Hollywood monster movies.
I had hoped that our group, which was led by National Geographic naturalists, might encounter at least one waved albatross, those huge seabirds whose wingspans can exceed 11 feet. We saw more than 100 of them.
Best of all, we were able to come within only a few feet of each of those creatures, which did not fly or slither or waddle away. Blue-footed boobies allowed us to look in on their nests. Sea lions playfully nipped at the flippers of snorkelers.
Our Nat Geo guides described the Galapagos creatures as “innocent.” They have not learned to fear people.
One had to wonder if this might be a foretaste of God’s new creation, which the Hebrew prophets picture as a place where “the wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them… They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:6-9).
Human commerce is never very far away, of course.
People line up to buy “celebrity creature” T-shirts, hand-carved tortoises, and orange-and-blue Sally Lightfoot crab etchings to display proudly on their mantels at home.
Those are the indelible images of the Galapagos.
But if you press your naturalist guides just a bit, they will acknowledge that one of the best stories of these fairytale islands is a creature that rarely gets much press and never appears on T-shirts. We’re talking about the ladybug.
Invasive species are almost always bad news on the Galapagos, where both biology and botany are ill-prepared to withstand non-native species. Ladybugs have proven to be the exception. After extensive research, scientists cautiously released a few of these beetles on the islands about 25 years ago. Their hope was that such humble creatures might eliminate other invasive insects which have been devouring irreplaceable endemic vegetation.
The experiment is working.
Beyond the scrutiny of tourists and the lenses of professional photographers, the ladybugs of the Galapagos quietly and heroically accomplish their “cleanup” work on stems and leaves.
In his recent book Steps, pastor John Ortberg notes, “Unless you become like the beetles, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” No, that’s not a recently discovered lost saying of Jesus. It’s simply a way of pointing out that humbly loving God and loving others, out of the limelight, is what makes life possible for everyone else.
Ortberg goes on to report that a small group of friends heard about the heroism of the ladybugs. One of them told the others that she often pictured herself as ordinary and unattractive, and quite possibly a disappointment to a number of people around her.
That’s when the members of the group all decided to get a little piece of jewelry engraved with the words, “Be the beetle.”
They would take heart every time they saw those words.
We can do the same.
Real heroism isn’t what shows up in a gift shop. It’s the everyday faithfulness of using our gifts, doing the next right thing, and just showing up in the seemingly ordinary places to which God has called us.
The limelight turns out to be vastly overrated.
Besides, being the beetle means you won’t have to spend your time shopping for blue socks to match those amazing blue feet.