Climbing Fish

The chinook salmon are back at the Whitehorse Rapids fish ladder. You can watch them live, pooling at the bottom of the ladder. Right now, as I watch, there are twenty or so salmon waiting their turn to go through. What do you see?

A fish ladder is a way to get the fish swimming upstream around the dam. It’s a system of ascending weirs, and the fish move up and through, leaping over the partitions or swimming through underwater doorways from one weir to the next until they go around the dam and into Schwatka Lake. From there the salmon continue travelling to the same creek they came from, where they spawn and die. 

A few chinook salmon swimming in the fish ladder last year

As they pass through the ladder, salmon are counted, and their sex and size is determined and recorded. This year so far there have been 220 Chinook salmon through the ladder, with about 100 of those coming through today.

Click to read more ...

Thankful Thursday

Join me in thanking God for this past week’s blessings.

This week, I’ve been thankful 

• for yesterday spent with the grandchildren; for their growth and development—even though some stages of development are more difficult than others. (Terrible twos, I’m thinking of you!)
• that the raspberries in my yard are beginning to ripen and the bushes are full of blossoms and berries to come.
• for every frost-free night. Yes, it’s time to begin watching the forecast nightly lows for frost warnings. Until the my tomato stops producing, every frost-free night is a gift.
• for the work my son is doing on my fence, replacing the rotted bits and staining the whole thing again.
• that I can entrust God with all the things that worry me, knowing that he cares for me.
• for resurrection—the resurrection of Jesus, and the certain future resurrection of all those united with him. 

Also thankful today:

• Kim Shay
• Persis

What are you thankful for? Leave a comment with your thanksgiving, post your thanksgiving on your blog, or tweet it. Give me the link by email or in a comment and I’ll add your thanksgiving to the list in the post.

Theological Term of the Week

pantheism
“[T]he view that there is a God, and God is everything. … God isn’t beyond the universe or greater than the universe. Rather, God is the universe.”1

• Scripture disproving pantheism by teaching that God is distinct from creation:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1 ESV)

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. 

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. (Romans 1:18-25 ESV)

Click to read more ...