Incredibly, we live in a world so vast and beautiful; a world brimming with wondrous things. It sounds cliche to talk about the world as if it isn’t also a difficult and broken place. Yet, beauty surprises me, especially when the darkness of the world tries to obscure it. Whales embody the surprising ways in which Beauty seeps into our lives as a gift of grace. I have never seen a whale in person, but learning about them has shown me God’s goodness as if they themselves were the teachers of a beautiful theology.
For one, I find it hard to listen to a whale’s song or watch footage of it swimming and not believe that there is a God. This is coming from a person who was not always a believing Christian. A Blue Whale, the largest animal on the planet, can fit 100 people in its mouth, yet it can only swallow something the size of a grapefruit, or a medium-sized beach ball. I could never conceive of such a thing. No power, or imagination of mine, could create such a complex creature. Whales confront me with the magnificence of God in the face of my own limitations.
Needless to say, if I encountered a whale while swimming in the ocean I would be terrified. Blue Whales can grow to be almost 100 feet long, and I am barely 5 feet 5 inches tall myself. I imagine the experience of meeting God face to face to be a somewhat similar experience. You cannot help but stand in awe of something so powerful and magnificent. Of course, whales are not God, but their design reveals their creator. Whales do not just affirm the existence of God, but also His goodness and His creativity.
The fun facts about whales are endless. The Bowhead Whale can live to be over 200 years old. That would make many of its kind older than the United States. Whale songs can be heard from over 100 km away underwater, making their songs the loudest calls in the ocean. A lion’s roar pales in comparison.
That being said, whales, like all beautiful things, exist in a world that is broken. But, beauty shines like a beacon into our darkness. This image is found throughout scripture. To connect this idea to our subject we can first examine the nature of water, the whales’ home, in the biblical narrative The image of water is used to convey chaos and disruption. We can see this encapsulated in the story of Noah and the ark. Before God established the cosmic order in Genesis 1:2, we are also told that “the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (ESV). It seems that the Biblical authors are intending to make a contrast between the image of water, and the order of the creation to come. We see also in the New Testament, that storms at sea are a formidable thing brought about by the unpredictability of water. And yet, in the midst of this chaos, there is this order and intentional design in the form of a whale.
In fact, their design is so complex we can only scratch the surface of their biology. In the midst of suffering and disruption, God offers us glimpses of hope and reassurance. The natural world is broken, yet it is also mingled with magnificent beauty as we wait for the fulfillment of our hope. I see whales as an image of the divine imprinted on the world. This image seeps into how we view the rest of God’s good creation. If whales are so incredible, how much more beautiful must we be, as bearers of our creator’s image?
You may say that it is not that deep and that whales are just animals that live on the same planet as us. But, let them surprise you; let beauty surprise you. I find that whales, and the beauty of creation, point to Christ in a way that no devotional ever could.
Josh Steen 
Grace Nealy 
Ethan Goonewardene