Whales & Angels

Jen’s mum went to be with her Lord and Saviour a few weeks ago. It was a tough time. We made it through the funeral, and afterward, we took a week to recuperate in Merimbula.

Merimbula is a coastal town just over the New South Wales border. It’s a beautiful place, one we’ve returned to many times over the years of our marriage. However, this trip was marked by several firsts: our first time post-COVID, our first trip without the kids (since 1999, at least), and our first attempt at a working holiday—with computers packed alongside our swimming gear.

It was also our first visit during whale season. From September to the end of November, tens of thousands of humpbacks migrate past the Sapphire Coast on their journey from Queensland to Antarctica. Jen and I spent hours watching them—mothers and calves splashing near the headlands, and massive bulls breaching and tail-slapping out in the deep. At one point, we were close enough to hear them breathing as they surfaced near the rocks.

There’s something deeply numinous about whales—their immense size, their songs and leaps, their mysterious lives out in the depths and among the ice. We never tired of watching them, wondering about their ways, and rejoicing in their abundance.

On those same days we were watching whales, we were also reading through 1 Peter 1, where the apostle speaks of our new life in Christ and how the prophets struggled to understand the shadowy revelations God was giving them. We read how “even angels long to look into these things” (v.12).

We are the whales. We are the mystery. Jesus became a human mammal and remains one.

And then an odd thought struck me: we are like whales to angels.

It’s easy to think it’s the other way around. Angels, like whales, seem mysterious to us—arcane inhabitants of strange realms; majestic travellers of hidden paths beyond our understanding.

But according to Peter, and from what we read in other places in the New Testament (Heb 2 and 1Cor 6:3, for example), we are the whales. We are the mystery. We are the groaning monsters summoned from the deep. We are the ones called to a great migration, spared from the hunter, and given a second chance. We are the species—despite our animal nature, despite our grotesque sinfulness—that Jesus Christ, the Son of God became.

In recent months, I’ve been reflecting on what it means to be human as I prepare for a seminar on the Incarnation in December. But I like this image of us as whales. I like the profound truth that Jesus became a human mammal and remains one. I like the idea that angels might watch us with wonder, waiting for us to break the surface and reveal what God is making us into.

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3:2)