Hi friend, thank you so much for downloading this podcast and I truly hope you hear something that edifies encourage, equips, enlightens, and then gets you out there in the marketplace of ideas. But before you go, I want to tell you about this month's truth tool. It's called Have You Ever Wondered? And I absolutely love this topic because if you're like me, going out into the night sky and looking up and seeing a million stars, don't you just stop and think
about God? And are you not in a moment of awe and wonder or looking out over the vast expanse of an ocean and you start thinking, what is man, that thou art mindful of him? And it makes you
wonder about the magnificence of God? I think that sense of wonder was put there on purpose, and this wonderful book includes a composite of multiple authors who have written from their perspective as a scientist, or a historian, or a mathematician or an artist, on why they all have this sense of awe through the work that they do. In other words, the heavens declare the glory. And as it tells us in Romans, we are really without excuse
because his handiwork is everywhere. And this book invites you to walk through the chapters written by people who all have a sense of awe and wonder when it comes to God through their various disciplines in life. It's an amazing book and it's yours. For a gift of any amount, just call 877 Janet 58. That's 877 Janet 58. Ask for a copy of Have You Ever Wondered? And we'll send it right off to you as my way of
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Here are some of the news headlines we're watching.
The conference was over. The president one of the.
Americans worshiping government over God.
Extremely rare safety move by a major 17 years.
The Palestinians and the Israelis negotiated.
The Bush tax is not.
Just give me a minute. I'll be right with you. Yeah. I want to feel the wind on my face just a little bit longer, and I can taste the salt on my lips. Oh, there's just something about the ocean. Hi, friends. Welcome to In the Market with Janet Parshall. So glad we're going to spend the hour together. Okay, here's the skinny. So I was landlocked in the Midwest for years. And then God, in his infinite wisdom, his mercy and his love, called our family to Washington, D.C.. And then I became
what's called a Mid-Atlantic girl. Now, for a kid who was landlocked to suddenly be so close to an ocean, I have to tell you, there was a lot of things I had to learn in short order. Number one, I thought I could endure a hurricane. So stupid. Me and a cat one hurricane. I stood out on the beach and I thought, oh, it's just a cat one. They can go all the way up to five. How bad can this get? Little did I know that when the wind blows, it turns the sand into shards of
glass and starts tearing at your flesh. So that was rule number one. Rule number two was. Oh, my. I think my attraction to the ocean is because it makes me think of God. I can't tell you any other way I feel about it except that it is vast, it is expansive, it is wild. It is uncontrollable. It's bigger than me. It doesn't take any prisoners. You'd better respect it. How quickly I learned that people could die when they were caught up in riptides, because in their
own hubris, they thought, oh, it's a wave. I'm not that far from shore. I'll never drown. And you begin to understand the magnificence that is the sea. And then you start doing a deep dive into God's word, and you realize he talks an awful lot about the sea. So here's the psalmist, and you can guess what seas he was looking at there in the Middle East. But he said, how many are your works, O Lord? In wisdom you made them all. The earth is full of
your creatures. There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number, living things both large and small. And there the ships go to and from. And the Leviathan which you formed to frolic there. Think of a Leviathan frolicking. So you can imagine when a book crossed my desk entitled If the Ocean Has a Soul. It stopped me dead in my tracks, particularly when I understood that the author is a marine biologist who has pursued
truth through deep waves of faith and science. And I was quickly to discover that not only has she had a wild ride of experiences and all the things that she's done, she has worked in marine aquaculture research, ocean organic chemistry laboratories, veterinary research facilities, the pet industry, and a museum. And she writes beautifully. The book itself is beautiful, just the graphics that are included in the book. But
the way in which Rachel Jordan writes is unbelievable. And, you know, when she's not diving or writing, she can be found reading C.S. Lewis. So I knew we were kindred spirits right out of the gate. Rachel is a professional marine biologist and lay theologian. She is a self professed, Jesus loving coral nerd. Now, how many times today are you going to hear that she was raised in Idaho, speaking of Landlock and has since traveled the globe chasing
her passion for faith and science. She got a master's in marine biology and ecology from James Cook University in where else? Australia. She got a BS in ecology from Seattle Pacific University and a certification in Bible studies from a Bible school in Germany. And she joins us today as the author of If the Ocean Has a Soul. Oh. Rachel, first and foremost, I loved your book. Thank you so much. I don't know how many people would have pondered to say, I know I'm going to write a book as a
marine biologist. Out of all my years of doing this. And friend, it is decades, not years. I've never once had a topic like this cross my desk. I fell deeply in love with this book, and I so appreciate that you gave that gift to all of us. So thank you and thank you for being here.
Oh, thank you so much for your kind words, Janet. It's so special to get some time with you. And I'm so excited to share my love for God's marine creation with you today.
Oh, it comes through loud and clear in the book, Rachel, so I can't wait to share some of those stories and friends and full disclosure to get you to get the book, because I'm not going to be able to do it justice. You're going to have to read Rachel's words for herself. You know, Scripture says, out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. I believe I can amend that a wee bit and say, out of the overflow of the heart, the pen writes. And that's
exactly what Rachel does in this book. So I have to start from the very beginning. How does a kid from Idaho fall in love with the ocean?
It is kind of a funny combination. Landlocked kid love for the ocean. My family took us kids on trips to the Oregon and Washington coast as I was growing up. We would make a trip out there about once a year. So even though I grew up in a landlocked state, I had access to a lot of lakes there, and then we would occasionally go to the ocean. And what really struck me about the ocean was that it's so vast, you can't see to the other side of it, and
it's teeming with creatures. You touched on one of my favorite songs of all time. It's teeming with creatures beyond number. The Bible tells us, and as a scientist, I can affirm that that is very much, in fact, the case. We're constantly discovering new creatures in the ocean. But as a kid, tide pools made some of these sea creatures accessible to me. Tide pools are these rocky outcroppings where the tide washes up and water collects in these pools.
And sometimes little creatures get trapped in these pools of water so you can crawl around on the rocks and explore and and pick up sea stars and touch sticky sea anemones, or chase after a crab. It was a wonderful way to get to experience the ocean for the first time as a kid. Wow.
Did you have any idea that it would be a full blown love affair?
I knew I loved it, but I think I sort of assumed that everybody felt that way about it. A lot of people love the ocean. I will say it's really hard to experience for yourself and not come away being fascinated by it in some way, shape or form, whether it's the power of it or the vastness or the diversity. There's so many incredible things about the ocean. But I think as a kid I just thought, yeah, everybody loves the ocean and everybody loves tidepooling and everybody
loves swimming. And I didn't occur to me that my deep love for it was maybe a little bit more of a personal thing. And I it's funny, I like joke now, um, that my my joke. But it's serious too. My love for the ocean, I realized, has really traveled a parallel path to my love for Jesus. I was introduced to him at a young age, and it's so neat how God's grown my love for both along the journey of life.
And you write about that in the book with such sweet eloquence. It's so wonderful. Well, you tell so many stories and I can't wait to share some of them with our audience. Rachel Jordan is with us for the entire hour. How often do you get to talk to a professional marine biologist and lay theologian? Now that's an interesting combination. Rachel's new book is called If the Ocean Has a Soul a marine Biologist Pursuit of Truth. Through deep waters of faith and science. We get to spend
the entire hour with Rachel. So we'll take a break and come right back. More after this. God uses so much in the world around us to point to him. Our sense of wonder is really about knowing him. That's why I've chosen. Have you ever wondered, as this month's Truth tool? This book is for all who have looked up at a million stars in the night sky and just wondered, ask for your copy of. Have you ever wondered when you give a gift of any amount to
in the market, call eight 7758. That's eight 7758 or go to in the market with Janet Parshall. Do you know that psychiatrists and psychologists will tell you that you should go to the the ocean as often as you can, because it is a natural stress reliever. Yeah, some people call it God's Valium, if you've ever heard it said that way before, that there's something about the rhythmic pattern of the waves that just dials down the stress. So
if you can get there, go there. Because there is oh, so much to learn just about creation and to start putting your mind on things above. I don't know how you look at an ocean without thinking of God, and that certainly was the case for Rachel Jordan, who said as her love for marine biology grew, so did her love for Jesus, and the two intersected. She's the author of the brand new book If the Ocean Has a Soul.
Rachel in the very beginning of the book, which I thought was interesting and very perceptive on your part, you drew your sword and you wanted to slay the dragon of mythology that says that science and religion, more specifically Christianity, are at war with one another. You know, the more scientists I talked to, and I've interviewed a boatload of them on this program, the more I understand that not only is that mythology, but scientists. It's like putting on
the best pair of glasses ever. And you see order and form and substance because you have a biblical worldview. Talk to me about the intersection between the two.
Yeah, well, as I talk about in the beginning of the book, I really feel like faith and science have the capacity to encourage and strengthen each other. As a scientist, I have a hope in my my career because of my faith, the because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, I am able to carry into my work a hope for the future and God's eventual restored creation. That my scientific counterparts who do not yet know and
love the Lord don't have, and vice versa. As a Christian, when I experience creation, I am able to look even deeper than just the sheer beauty and glory that it displays of God's character. But because I, for my job, studied the how of how things operate, how things fit together, how they intersect and integrate and affect us, how humans are part of this giant ecosystem that God's created because
of all those things. I have an even deeper appreciation for the ways God's character is displayed through everything that he's made. So I don't just see God's beauty and glory, but I see all different kinds of attributes, even through the lowliest little fish up to the biggest whale. There's so much to be learned about God's character from his creation, and I'm really blessed to have a front row seat to that.
And that's exactly what you write about in the book. That's why the stories are so engaging, because not only do you teach us something about this particular bit of marine life, but it teaches us something about the character of God. So let me just pause for a moment and address the lay theologian in you. You know, I love the way that the Bible tells us that the heavens declare his glory, that we can see his handiwork everywhere.
As a marine biologist, it must be interesting and I'm wondering if a tad frustrating that you know that as the as the psalmist said, the ocean is teeming with all of these creatures, large and small, and the overwhelming number of people on planet Earth will never see them. So then you think, why is God's handiwork hid? And why would he be so prolific in his colors, his shapes, his forms and types when we won't even get to see all of them? What does that tell us about God?
I think it tells us that God and His story for creation is a lot less anthropocentric than we might think. Anthropocentric meaning human centered. I think we as humans tend to be a little bit, perhaps selfish in how we view God's story. We view it on human terms. Understandably. That is our context, our paradigm. That's that's the way in which we experience everything. And God did make us that way. And there's a beauty to that. We're made in his image. There's tremendous value to it. But it's
it's a limiting factor. And I think to recognize Eyes that maybe, maybe other aspects of God creation, that there's a wisdom and a richness and even relationship between them and God independent of us humans that is worth considering and exploring and admiring. And so that is where I think a lot of my curiosity for nature comes from.
It's as I get deeper into the ocean and exploring it and learning about all the different critters that live there, I feel as though I'm getting to understand specific attributes of God's character and and maybe by encountering a specific kind of fish at a specific moment in time, or by interacting with a particularly colorful coral in a certain location by having these individual experiences. I think each of
them declare God's glory in their own unique way. So what can I as a witness to this moment, to this creature and the mode in which it praises God. What can I learn about God's character and that whole question that's completely independent of me? I mean, I'm there as a witness. I'm not the one orchestrating this. I'm not God. I'm not sustaining these things. I'm not telling these creatures to perform their function. They are doing that.
That's the way that they were designed. They were created beautifully and wonderfully by God to fulfill their specific ecological niche, to do the thing they were made to do. And so many of them do it well. And I want to stand as a witness to that and ask, what can I learn about these things that teaches me about who God is? Does that make sense?
Oh, it makes unbelievable sense. I was thinking also when you were talking, if I can borrow the line from Chariots of Fire, where Eric Liddell says, when I run, I feel his pleasure. Maybe even though you and I can't see all of the creation that he has put inside the oceans. Maybe he made it for his pleasure. And that's okay. Like you say, that's sitting back. What does it say about God that he is putting his handiwork on display? Even if mankind won't see all of it?
Get to be some of it. Some very special people like you get to see it up close and personal, and it says something about who he is, the majesty. And again, I talked about the ocean before. I love the fact that God is untamable, and when he has so many creations in the ocean that we can't even identify them, we're finding new species all the time. I love it because it reminds me that God Himself is untamable, and that's the kind of a god I think we all should want. Let me take a break. It is
an absolutely fascinating book. It's entitled If the Ocean Has a Soul. Rachel Jordan is the author. She's a professional marine biologist as well as a lay theologian. And in her new book, she talks to the animals, the fish, the Coral reef. And she does it beautifully as she's observing the handiwork of God. We'll get into some of those stories when we return. We're spending the hour at the ocean where we're going to learn about God's magnificent
creation and what nature can teach us about God. Rachel Jordan is our guide. She's a professional marine biologist and lay theologian, and she's written the book If the Ocean Has a Soul A marine Biologist Pursuit of Truth Through Deep Waters of Faith and science. It is very clear early on in the book, Rachel, that you have a passion for coral reef, and I want you to tell me why and also So explain to our friends what Sctld is.
Yeah. So corals look like a rock, a very colorful rock, but they are actually an animal. Um, most coral species are sessile, which means that they don't move once they settle on the ocean floor as tiny little microscopic juveniles and start multiplying their bodies to grow. They stay in that fixed position for their whole lives. Corals are really unique because they actually don't senesce. Meaning that they don't age. Their cells have regenerative abilities that don't wear out with time.
So hypothetically, if a coral had the perfect environment it needed to grow, it could continue growing and living for forever, which is pretty wild. And that's partly why when we talk about statistics like global reefs are in decline. It's very alarming as a coral biologist, because we're talking about animals that are supposed to live hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, and they're not living very long or very,
very old. Corals older than the oldest person alive right now are dying because their environment has become so extreme. One example of a environmental effect that's taken hold that's affecting coral survival is sctld, which stands for stony coral tissue loss disease. It's one of a variety of different kinds of tissue loss diseases, which is where tissue loss diseases cause the tissue, the body of the coral animal
to slough off the skeleton of the animal. And corals bodies are sort of like a layered cake where the base layer is the skeleton and the frosting is their body. So it'd be like peeling the frosting up off a cake. And that's what these diseases do. But sctld is unique among tissue loss diseases because of how violent it is. It's very necrotic. It has a very high mortality rate. If a coral contracts sctld, it has an extremely high likelihood of dying. And to date, we haven't found a
great cure for it. Um, one of my jobs working for the National Park Service at Dry Tortugas was to apply an intervention treatment. Um, a special antibiotic and cocoa butter based mixture to the lesions of sick corals in order to try to treat the disease that the coral could recover. And while we find that the treatment slowed the progression of disease lesions across individual corals. The corals
would eventually succumb to the disease. So while we were able to slow sctld, we weren't able to extinguish it. And it was really hard. Um, you know, scientists are people too. We're were very emotional creatures and going through the experience of watching an underwater ecosystem collapse and the death of hundreds and hundreds of coral animals was very, very hard. Um, and that was something that really brought
me into conversation with God during scuba diving. I would be diving along, treating a sick coral, knowing that it probably didn't stand much of a chance against Sctld, but I had the opportunity to pray for it and to admire how beautiful it was, and to think about how God had intentionally created it and was giving me the opportunity to minister to this creature in a moment of need. It was a very special experience.
Part of that regime to try to deter you actually use amoxicillin, correct?
Yeah. Amoxicillin was the antibiotic base of the ointment that we put on. So we would mix amoxicillin in powdered form with this toothpaste type textured cocoa butter based mixture
called base to be. It was developed specifically for this coral treatment, and you'd mix the two together and it would form this really thick, very gooey, mucousy type putty that we would pack into caulk tubes by hand and then slim down on while scuba diving and treat the corals, and you'd squirt out the treatment onto the surface of the coral on the sick part, and kind of pack it into the coral grooves as much as you could
to try to get the treatment to stick. And that was supposed to act like a firebreak, keeping the disease from progressing further across the surface of the animal.
Wow. The reason I bring that up is because there are kinds of people within the sound of our voices who have had amoxicillin. They've used it for their kids when they got sick. And so all of a sudden, you've taken the whole idea of a coral reef, and instead of us looking at it as a kind of funky, porous rock, you now talk about it as a living entity, which people who aren't in the world of science or
marine biology in particular, don't understand. It's a living entity, but the same antibiotic that you take, not the same combination with the cocoa butter, but the same antibiotic was exactly what was used to try to deter the spread of this disease that was eradicating the coral reefs. So to me, that just changed my whole perspective on that immediately because I thought, wow, it's not just pink rock or it isn't. Something gets turned into jewelry at a
gift store, at a vacation spot. This is an entity. This is a living thing, reflective of the handiwork of God. So let me ask the question and you hear the music. So I'll take the answer on the other side. You talked about praying for this. And you know, I see no difference for that between praying for my dog that's sick and asking God if it's his will to please heal my dog. Those of us who have animals, I think God cares about that. In fact, the Bible says
a righteous man attendeth his animals. So what did God teach you through the choral experiences. What were the attributes of God that you witnessed as that front row seat? Learning more and more about the creator himself. It's an absolutely fascinating book that Rachel Jordan has written. It's called If the Ocean Has a Soul. And again, she is a professional marine biologist as well as a lay theologian. And it will make you think about the world around
us and God's handiwork in a whole different way. And I think that's a good thing. Back after this. The Bible says the Word of God illuminates our walk through life. It's a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. Without it, we stumble and fall in the market with Janet Parshall is designed to help you look at the headlines of the day through the lens of Scripture. When you become a partial partner, you help to make this broadcast possible, and as a partial partner, you'll receive
exclusive benefits. So why not become a partial partner today? Call 877 Janet 58 or go to in the market with Janet Parshall. Oh. That sounds wonderful. It just relaxes you, does it not? Well, Rachel Jordan is with us. She's a professional marine biologist and lay theologian. She is a self-professed Jesus loving choral nerd raised in Idaho, traveled the world with her passion for faith and science. In addition
to working as a coral biologist for the U.S. Park National Park, Rachel has worked in marine aquaculture research, organic chemistry laboratories, veterinary research facilities, the pet industry, and yes, even a museum. She joins us today with a marvelous book entitled If the Ocean Has a Soul. The subtitle a marine Biologists Pursuit of Truth Through Deep Waters of faith and science. So I have to ask you because
you addressed it in the book. In fact, you say it's one of the most common questions that you're asked on a regular basis. And it has to do with the topic of sharks. So I will ask for the people who are listening all across the United States, because they'll get mad at me if I don't ask you a shark question. Let me drop in a sharp story. So we've got a shark that apparently was swimming off the waters of Florida. He's 14ft. He is a great white.
He has been tagged, so they are tracking him. He has most recently passed Cape Hatteras at the Outer Banks. And he's moving north through the warm waters and obviously going up north where he's probably going to be a part of the breeding grounds up there. I don't need a bigger boat. I'm just not going in the water. So what was it like for you the first time that you saw a shark?
Well, I haven't seen any great whites in person, but the first time I got to swim with sharks actually kind of healed something in me. My whole growing up, I'd always been really afraid of sharks. I read about it in the book. I used to have these horrible nightmares where I'd be charged by a shark, and right before it chomped down, I'd wake up in a cold sweat. And it was terrifying. And it was such an extreme fear. Even when I was an adult in a swimming pool,
it would just sort of creep up on me. And it was a really inconvenient fear for a marine biologist. And so what's wild is that, God, I don't know if this is his version of exposure therapy or what, but my first experience swimming with sharks was, um, actually, if I remember right, it happened in the Blue Hole in Belize, and there were some lemon sharks off in the distance silhouetted. And I was so bewildered by it because it was it was simultaneously terrifying because I had
this fear already. But it was so beautiful. It was like seeing. Being. It's almost like seeing an eagle just see through the sky. Just something incredibly agile and swift and elegant to their bodies. And after doing a couple dives with sharks, um, it finally occurred to me not that long later, I was like, I, I don't think I'm afraid of them the same way anymore. They're just
stunning creatures. They're incredibly beautiful. I think it also helps that almost every time I've ever been in the water with a shark, it's more afraid of me than I am of it. Um, they tend to take one, like, look at me in the water, or they kind of sniff me from the vibrations going through the water, and they turn on a dime and just disappear into the darkness. There's a flash and they're gone because they get scared of me. So there's kind of a comfort to that.
I think sharks are really heavily villainized, especially by the media. Um, I have yet to see jaws. Um, but I just. I am blown away by what beautiful creatures they are. And as you read from that Psalm earlier, you know God created Leviathan to frolic in the ocean. And I love the idea of Leviathan frolicking. I think sharks are an example of a modern day Leviathan, even if it's just in our own head of how we view them
as sort of this monstrosity. But they frolic. There's a beautiful praise and intentionality to what they are, and that glorifies God too.
So I'm going to go back to what you learned about God through the coral reef. Tell me what you learned about God with sharks through sharks.
Oh, man. I think his power is almost like a restrained kind of power. When I first saw a shark up close, I remember thinking, oh my goodness, I feel like I'm seeing a tiger in the jungle. You know, it was it was this feeling of like this, this creature was made for this environment. Environments. This is where it belongs. I am the intruder in this space. Not it. And it is restrained power. It could choose to do something. You know. Perhaps we might classify as, you know, violent or,
you know, has sharp teeth. It can move fast, all these things. But it is it is restrained. It has self-control. It is holding back. And these creatures can be curious in the same way that we humans can be curious. I might be checking out the shark, like, you know, what's it doing and where is it going and how does it feel? But it might be doing the same thing to me, kind of sizing me up like, what is that funny looking, bubbly creature that's making all this
racket underwater? What on earth is it doing? Um, so they're probably interested in us in sort of a similar capacity, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I think that's wonderful.
Yeah, I do too. So as long as I'm talking about Leviathan. Let's talk about whales. Ever seen one and talk to me about the magic castles?
Uh, yes. I have not seen a whale in the water with me. I have heard them. And one of the neatest experience I had, one of the neatest experiences I've had in the ocean was, um, one of my intervention. Disease treatment dives at this dive site called Magic Castles, which was this collection of nine very large pillar corals. Um, the scientific name is Dendrogyra cylindrus. They're extremely endangered. And there's very, very, very few of them left existing in
the world. Um, and so to be at a dive site where nine of them were clustered together was pretty miraculous to begin with. But what was tragic was I wasn't there to just dive the site and enjoy the corals. I was there to help them try to fight off the disease that they had contracted. And so I would spend dozens of hours, you know, not all in one go,
of course, but over the course of several days. My dive team and I would be diving that site repetitively over and over and over again, going down in two, three, four, sometimes even more people. These teams, to try to tackle this disease and give the corals the best chance of survival. And unfortunately we we failed. And I got to watch
magic castles these incredibly tall corals there. They're about oh my goodness they would be about from from base along the sea floor to the tippy top about five feet away from the water surface. The water was was about, you know, maybe 25ft deep in some places. So they were tremendously large. It's truly like these, these castles underwater. And they're covered with these gorgeous, flowy, peach flower esque polyps.
These really beautiful little flower like tendrils that would wave at you in the current, um, it was incredibly beautiful. And to watch them slowly succumb to this disease was really hard. But one of the neatest experiences I ever had was near the end of the corals lives, and I was struggling to keep it together in the water, just, you know, trying to do my job and praying. And I kept hearing these funny noises. I was like, what
is going on? And it wasn't really until the end of my dive that I started to piece together what was happening. When you're underwater, there's a lot of sounds. There's the gurgling of your own exhaled breaths. There's sort of the squeak of your regulator as you inhale. There's the clickings and snappings and scratchings of fish, you know, digging around for food and sort of whirling around through the water. Um, your, your dive buddy might be hammering
away at something. All these things make noise. It's. It's very a quiet, meditative environment, but there's a lot of sound at the same time. It's just what you might consider white noise, but a very large variety of sounds. But to hear like this strange, singsong like sound coming through the backdrop was very unusual. That was not normal. And I pieced it together around the end of my dive.
And what confirmed my hunch was when my dive buddy swam up to me with a clipboard on which she'd scrawled, can you hear the whales? And it was such an encouragement to my heart because I was grieving the loss of magic castles and just trying to do my work and and trying to, you know, love my dive team. Well, trying to care for these creatures that are dying and not let my heart be ripped out in the process. But every day is really hard when you are actively
watching a creature you love die. And then there were whales singing in the background, and it was just this balm to my heart that I didn't know I needed. But I feel like God had them sing loud enough that I could hear them, so that I could have the encouragement I needed that day. And it was a really special moment.
Let me go back to the coral reefs, because that is your passion, that is your heart. And you've got so many chapters to your life that are written about in the book. So if I don't get time to talk about them, friends, you get a chance to read them in the book. If the ocean has a soul but you experience death, what does that teach you about God?
Death is a tough one, especially to answer in just a brief couple minutes on the radio, but I will do my best. Um, I think in the context of coral and talking about the death of coral reefs, I think what I learned as someone who deeply loves this ecosystem and has spent so much of my life laboring over them. What I've recognized is that if I love coral enough that I've chosen to spend my life this way,
how much more so does God love coral? And if my heart is grieving, how much more so does he grieve? And if I have a good plan and hopes for these creatures, how much more so does he?
So there's a lot of encouragement in that. Well.
Let me take a break in a conversation that's going far too quickly. Rachel Jordan's brand new book is called If the Ocean Has a Soul a marine Biologists Pursuit of Truth Through Deep Waters of Faith and science. So much more in the book that even the gift of one hour of Rachel's time doesn't give me the opportunity to explore. You can explore when you get the book
back after this. That's an orchestra of sound. You heard seagulls and dolphin and whale, all of those wonderful creations that the Lord has made filling the oceans with all of these amazing creatures. Rachel Jordan knows that full well. She's been in some of the most significant bodies of water on planet Earth. As a professional marine biologist and a lay theologian, she loves to write about science and
faith together. And she's written a brand new book called If the Ocean Has a Soul a marine Biologist Pursuit of Truth Through Deep Waters of Faith and science. Rachel, there's so much in the book. Let me, because I want to make sure I get this story in, because out of all the stories I read, I think the ones that touched me the most was in a period of your life. When you had finished your grad work in Australia, you came back and you were struggling to
find a job, you know, and I'm thinking? Well, with your background, a master's from a university in Australia on marine biology, you'd be snapped up right away. But that wasn't God's plan. So you were struggling for a while and ended up, believe it or not, in a pet shop. So you go from looking at animals in the wild, hearing whales when you're at magic castles, to looking at fish in tanks in a pet store. That in and of itself had to be a humbling and challenging experience.
But your heart comes through so much in this part of the book that I just really want to talk about it. So how many of us as parents have not bought our child a goldfish that comes home in a small bag of water, right about two inches of water, one fish and he's in this plastic bag, and then the other ones with the beautiful tails that whip around. And they're. Are they beta? Is that how I say it? Beta fish. Yeah. Beta fish. So you. I just love your heart on this. So these animals would come in
and a lot of them wouldn't be real healthy. And so what does Rachel Jordan do? She's going to be Nurse Jordan to these fish. Tell me the story. It's so fabulous.
Well, as you mentioned, I was I was going through sort of a hard time in my non-professional, but also professional life and really struggling to get a job, wound up working at a pet store, and my manager was a recent high school graduate who took me under his wing and mentored me in everything, the aquarium hobby that
he knew. He was such a rock star, and one of the ongoing issues that the pet store had was that we would get large shipments of beta fish in from overseas, where they would be bred and from which they'd be sent to us. And these fish arrived in such bad conditions that sometimes they would show up dead on arrival. But more often than not, about half of
the shipment would be sick. And it was really tough because your job in a pet store environment is ultimately like, you know, to take care of the animals, of course, but also to make sales for the store. And you can't very well sell a sick fish to someone. It's problematic on so many levels, and it's also heartbreaking as a new pet owner to take home a fish and to give it a name and begin loving it, and then, you know, next day it's floating. Like, that's.
That's really.
Sad. And so the only solution that I could come up with, because our time working in the pet store was limited. We had so many different jobs we were supposed to be doing back in the aquatics department. My request to my manager, which he graciously granted, was can I take home the sick, sick bay fish and put them in individual containers, give them medication, give them nice little fluffy aquatic plants to play with. Give them the best possible food that is available to us from the
store and give them regular water changes. Give them treatments every single day on my own time. unpaid. I'll pay for the resources and see if we can get them back to health. And it was. It was an experiment that I needed in order to feel like there was purpose for that season in my life, but it ended up being such a bonding experience. Some of the relationships that I formed with these individual fish were incredibly special, but then it was a huge blessing to my family.
I was living with my parents at the time, and this project, what we called the Beta Hospital, literally brought my parents into my bedroom and into conversation with me. And it was so sweet because when I went to bed at night, my parents would tiptoe in and say good night to me, of course, but they would also say good night to the fish, just in case one of them didn't happen to make it until morning. And
it was really a special season. Um, and the good news is that we were able to to help so many of the beta fish get back to full health and really flourish. Especially the ones that, you know, maybe they had some necrosis in their fins, or they'd gotten into a fight with another fish, or they had some kind of a disease on their scales. These fish that looked so rough and pale when I first took them home, would go back to the pet store with these long flowing fins.
All sorts of beautiful bright.
Jewel colors. And my manager was just awestruck. And. And those beta fish would sell the fastest. Those were the ones that people wanted to take home. And what's more, they loved the story of the Beta Hospital. For every fish that I took home and nursed back to health. I'd get to know their personality a little bit. Some fish preferred, you know, larger pellets of food or some fish really liked snuggling into the folds of the leaves
of the plants in their tank. Or other fish would really hang out, like at the top of their tank, and they'd, like, waggle their fins really excitedly when they saw you. So I took notes on the different attributes of these fish, and when they went back to the pet store, they'd get a little card included with their, um, their setup in the pet store that introduced their story, that they had gone to the hospital, but they were back to full health. And here are a couple things
about the fish. And and it really was so special for that time in my life and the community of people there. My, my best days working that job were when people who'd bought a hospital data came back in to give me an update on their fish, and they'd.
Show me pictures.
Of their decked out tank and tell stories about how much their kids loved the fish. And those were really special times.
Well, and what you did was so cool because you put a card with these animals that had been in the hospital and were recovering, and the card said hello. I arrived at the store sick, but I have since made a full recovery in the hospital. I prefer big food pellets and enjoy blowing bubbles in my free time. I like to wave my fins when people visit my tank. For more information, please ask a stall aquarist. So I love the fact that you personalize them. Um, you name
them because only a marine biologist would do this. Letters of the Greek alphabet and your mom and dad would call them by name. You talk about pi. There's a wonderful story in there about how your dad very much had this relationship with this wonderful little baby, who would swim faster and faster when your dad walked into the room. There is so much more. I cannot believe this hour is over. Rachel, I want to tell my friends you're
missing something. If you don't read this book, it's going to open your eyes to the majesty and the wonder of God and the world that he's created for us, all around us. So check it out. It's called If the Ocean Has a Soul written by my guest, Rachel Jordan. Rachel, thank you for a memorable conversation and a fabulous book. We'll see you next time, friends.