In his book Star Struck, Christian astronomer Dr. David H. Bradstreet writes:

Our planet is home to some 10 to 14 million species of living things. Consider the lowly dandelion. Found on all the Earth's continents, these tenacious plants seem to flourish anywhere and everywhere (particularly where fussy gardeners wish they wouldn't). Dandelion flower heads are perfectly designed for maximum seed creation and dispersal. Each yellow, flowering head can disperse 50 to 175 seeds to the winds. One single dandelion plant can create more than two thousand seeds.

Or consider the power of plants. A recent column in the New York Times hailed them for being "as close to biological miracles as a scientist could dare admit." As Douglas Tallamy writes, "After all, they allow us to eat sunlight … and plants also produce oxygen, build topsoil and hold it in place, prevent floods, sequester carbon dioxide, buffer extreme weather and clean our water."

Or consider the way God has made life thrive even in the deepest and darkest regions of the ocean floor, where no sunshine ever permeates the gloom. Strange plants grow 20,000 feet below the surface, surviving on chemical nutrients emerging from vents in the ocean floor.

It's this kind of mind-blowing biological diversity that I think about when I'm singing "For the Beauty of the Earth," one of my favorite hymns.