One of the items on my bucket list is to visit the world’s great museums of natural history. Within these museums lie “archives that provide clues about raging epidemics, environmental pollution, and hidden extinctions” (Yong, 2015). Museums of natural history contain records of ecosystems that continue to change and disappear.
What I did not know is that natural history museums contain many undiscovered species. In 2011, a geneticist at Fordham University named Evon Hekkala discovered that a species of crocodile hidden within a diorama in the American Museum of Natural History (the Nile crocodile) was actually two species. She collected DNA samples from various museum collections and found that the Nile crocodile has both a Western and Eastern species, the Eastern having two fewer chromosomes than the Western Nile crocodile.
The average animal specimen waits 21 years to be formally described. One pit viper waited 206 years to be identified. I want to be identified as a Christian. I want to be recognized as a child of God. However, lost between the pressures of life and the freedom found in Christ, I often neglect to build the strong relationship with God I need in order for my life to reveal his work in me. I love what Paul writes in Galatians 2:20: “My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (NLT). Are you two species lost in one or are you truly living a new life in Christ?
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