On knowing when the hinds calve (Job 39)

I am not a theologian, but it is hard not to wonder and imagine when one is alone in a wood on a glorious morning in June what God was thinking when He wrought all this.  It is nearly overwhelming to the senses, such are the sights, smells, and sounds.  I get overwhelmed simply studying the plants nearest me and their resident insects and this is multiplied exponentially throughout the forest and does not account for the creatures too small to see, let alone the birds and larger creatures not currently in my view.  Yet every leaf and blade of grass is intimately known to God, how can He even begin to comprehend it?  This brought to mind what little we know of life before the fall of humanity into darkness:

^{Genesis 1:26-28 ESV:}

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

^{Genesis 2:15, 18-20 ESV:}

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”  Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.

What I love (and hate) about Genesis is that it hints at what happened, where everything came from, and what things were like, but there is far from enough detail to satisfy my ravenous curiosity.  But there is enough for what we need and therein I should be content, except on such a morning!  It seems most people have this innate love for growing or caring for plants or animals, and according to this passage, it is in our very bones.  Whether we farm 10,000 acres, breed iguanas, or simply manage to keep a houseplant alive, it brings us a sense of satisfaction we can find in little else.  Perhaps that is why dogs have become very nearly children in our confused culture.  The first duty of our forebears was to study and tend the world that was their home, though it has become rather confused through sin and the intervening years, it is still in our DNA, so to speak. 

What has mankind lost?  What intimacy will we never have with the natural world as God first seemed to intend?  Genesis 9:2 contains this curious phrase: "The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered."  The setting is God speaking to Noah after the flood.  We take the wariness of wild things for granted, but it is at least hinted at in Scripture that it was not always so.  It is such questions that I love to ask but for which there is but little answer.  What was it like?  What will it be like when all is made anew?  It is an intriguing question. 

But until I find my answers, at least I know there is One who does know all that passes amongst the bugs and the grass of this world.  He knows the movement of the smallest subatomic particles and He knows every hair on my head.  In a world of confusion and doubt, that is reassurance indeed!