MEXICAN FREE-TAILED BATS

It is almost dawn when the female Mexican free-tailed bat returns to her roost in Bracken Cave. After a night of feeding on insects, she and the rest of her colony—approximately 20 million female bats—make their diving descent toward the lip of the half-hidden cave, swooping in at a high rate of speed. 

Somehow, though, among the millions of bat pups “crying” for their mothers, she is able to find her young. Drawn by its scent and the particular sound it makes, she knows her own in a deep and intimate way.

“Yahweh, you have searched me, and you know me,” the Psalmist wrote. “You know my sitting down and my rising up…The darkness is like light to you. For you formed my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother’s womb.”

In a deep and intimate way, God knows each one of us. God recognizes our voices when we cry out in the night. God knows the sound of our breathing.