Good morning, everybody. We're on Lesson 49, and it's dedicated by Dr. Isaac Shalom in honor of the upcoming Chavruta (study partner) tonight, this Wednesday, in the Yad Yosef. We'll explain a little bit later, and we'll have a link if you'd like to join.
We last left off talking about how the Baal Bitachon (one who trusts) takes strength from the world around him. He sees what's going on in nature, and that speaks to him. That's what the Chovot HaLevavot is training us to do. He sees the embryo in its mother's womb and says, “Wow, how'd that embryo get there? Who's feeding the embryo? Who's nourishing the embryo? Who's giving oxygen to the embryo?” Well, the same God who did it then for me could do it now for me.
Then, when he has his breakfast in the morning and eats his egg, we might put a little picture on because people are a little confused about exactly what he's doing—exactly what the makeup of the egg is. But who set up the egg like that? Who gave it food? Who gave it oxygen?
The next point is, today's class is going to be on two words. And the bird in the air. A bird is in the air. Now, there's no food in the air. There's no food in the air. We live down here. Birds live up there. Birds are in the air. There's no food in the air. So if your main place is in the air, you've got a problem. There's no food in the air. So God gave birds different abilities in order to feed themselves. They're natural abilities. But again, we're supposed to learn from nature. Shlomo HaMelech says, “You're lazy? Watch ants.” You want to get a little chizuk (encouragement)? Watch ants.
We're very far away from nature. Next time you go to Florida—and you're in Florida now, for that matter—there's a safari about an hour out of Miami. It's a beautiful two-hour experience. You take a CD, and you go through it and look at nature. Every step of the way is a wow that you can learn from: how God gave animals their abilities.
I want to take a vulture for a moment. I was sitting in the doctor's office not long ago, and National Geographic had about 20 pages on vultures. It was fascinating how vultures have a tremendous sense of smell and sense of sight. They could be miles and miles away from a carcass. They pick up that smell and sight literally miles away, and they're able to get there. Within a half an hour, an entire carcass is gone. That's why they say, you know, “You're waiting there like vultures.” That's where the term came from: vultures.
How are vultures able to do that? The animal just died. He's not, he's hard; he's got leather. They have special beaks that can poke in. Every single part of them is made to devour that carcass. That's God's way of feeding them. In the broader sense, which I was fascinated by, all these carcasses would cause all kinds of problems—all kinds of disease and all kinds of infection. So vultures are really God's sanitation system, so that things get cleaned up. God put in a system so that things get cleaned up. There's a lot of lessons from the vulture, but let's put the vulture on the side.
Then we have many birds that have the ability to see fish in water. If you ever watch one of these National Geographic or other kinds of science videos, it's fascinating. The fish is in the water, and the bird is in the air, and he's able to come down from the air, swoop down into the water, and pull that fish out. God gave him the claws. God gave him the eyesight. God gave him the ability to—it's like, you know, you gotta go where the puck's going. I forgot what the saying is. There's some famous sports guy that says, “How are you successful? I don't go where the puck is. I go where the puck's going.” I don't know what the guy's name is. I don't know, some goalie or something. “I go where the puck's going.” What's the famous Canadian hockey guy? Wayne Gretzky, I think. Wayne Gretzky, something like that. The birds go where the puck's going. He's coming down not where the fish is, but where the fish is going. Where'd he get those abilities? God gave him those abilities in order to pluck the fish out of the water.
A flamingo has very thin feet. He has this long beak, right? The pink flamingo looks gorgeous. But that was also part of God's plan. If he'd had thick feet, the fish would see the feet. They would see some predator there. They don't see a predator. It looks like some stalk or something like that, and they just go swimming by. When he's ready, he just comes right down with this thing, and he gets it. That's the whole thing. He's hunting. That's why he has those tall, thin legs. So there's endless abilities that God gave birds.
The Baal Bitachon says, “God likes birds, but he likes me even more.” If he gave all those things to birds, can't he take care of me? Of course he's going to take care of you. He's going to take care of you in every which way. And that is the chizuk the Baal Bitachon gets just from looking around in nature and saying, “Wow, Hashem takes care of them. He's going to take care of me. How? I don't know. But he can do it.” Have a great day.