The painting shows a trilobite, an ancient type of arthropod in the seas about 500 million years ago. This was a time when there was a great upsurge of life in the oceans and the trilobite swims towards a circular plant structure that reminds us of the crown of thorns. Evolution is a process that is marked by deep time - billions of years – and some cul-de-sacs and seeming wastage of organisms (like the dinosaurs). Yet we take this on board as Christians. God creates, and perhaps without using a blueprint in designing the world, leaves the evolutionary process to develop in freedom to develop the life of humanity, the apex of creation. Humanity itself reaches its fulfilment in Christ who is signified here by the circle of thorns and the tree (echoed in one of R.S.Thomas' poems "In a Country Church").

This is not to underplay the environmental significance of the universe. To God a thousand years are as single day. My response is one of awe at the beauty and ingenuity of God working his marvels through evolution.

Animal life is taken up in the sweep of God’s creation of life, an acknowledgement that has perhaps not always been very clear in Christian spirituality. Here such life is given a place in the dynamic of God’s creation and we can praise God for it.