Psalm 34:8

"Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him! Oh, fear the LORD, you His saints, for those who fear Him have no lack! The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing" (Psalm 34:8-10, English Standard Version).

Isn't that a neat verse? I've been thinking about it some recently, and have found it to be very true. The Lord is good. Sometimes I might imagine that there are things that are better or things that might give me more pleasure or satisfaction, but there isn't. He is the one and only source of true satisfaction and happiness.

Christmas Eve in our family is the one day of the year where we are allowed to eat as many sweets as we can fit down. All through December we spend a significant amount of time baking and cooking all kinds of chocolatey sugary goodness and putting it in containers. When Christmas Eve rolls around, all the containers get laid on the table, and the lids are taken off. We spend the rest of the day eating nothing but chocolate and sugar. It has to be one of the best days of the year! And yet, at the end of the day it has its drawbacks. You get really REALLY sick of sugar. Just goes to show that this world really doesn't have anything to offer for true satisfaction. The pleasure given by that great food was both temporary and, in the end, sickening. But the satisfaction given by delighting in God is eternal and wonderful.

Well, after thinking about this verse, a picture came to my head that I simply couldn't resist trying to take. So I got my camera out and set up for the picture below. It's no photographic wonder, but it still serves as a nice reminder of the truth taught in Psalm 34:8:

Like I said, it's nothing spectacular, but it's still a good reminder that God is the only one who is truly satisfying and delightful.

Map of Our House

Okay. I promised I would get a map, and I got a map, courtesy of Google Earth (a very cool program!). Here you go:

This map is laid out like a normal map, north being straight up, south straight down, and so on. The field is where I get all my sunset pictures, behind the stone wall is where I get all my sunrise pictures, and the hill is where we usually get our star pictures. The horsefield is a great butterfly photography location, and I've gotten the neighbor's permission to use it for that. But needless to say, right now the weather isn't quite ideal for butterflies. The hill is where I got my last John 15:5 picture, the field is where I got my Against the Grain picture. Behind the stone wall is probably my favorite place, because there are relatively few houses out that way, and it's just so hilly and pretty out there. Some day I'm sure you'll see some pictures from out that way. But anyway, that's our property. So now hopefully when I attempt to describe where my pictures are being taken from, I can refer to this map to make it easier.

John 15:5

Back in September of this year, I was thinking a lot about John 15:5: "I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing" (English Standard Version). It's a neat verse. I love it when God uses good analogies and imagery in His Word. It makes it so much easier to understand! Anyway, I was thinking about the verse and what it meant for me. Sometimes it seems like my life isn't very fruitful. I often feel that I don't really accomplish anything useful. So this was a neat verse to remind me that whether it seems like it or not, if I'm abiding in Christ, I will bear fruit. That was an encouragement to me, and I couldn't help but picture the imagery in my head. I pictured a big thick vine with a branch rooted in it, and that branch was bearing a bunch of grapes. Immediately I began thinking of how I could create my ideas into a photograph.

Now you may be wondering where in the world I am going to get a picture of a vine, branches, and grapes. Well, I wondered that too, but I had an idea. So one evening I went outside with my camera to a slope to the south of our house (one of these days I'll post a map!). On this slope, on the edge of the woods, we have some wild grape vines. I thought that just maybe I could use these to get what I wanted. It also just so happened to be their season, and the vines were loaded with wild grapes! However, the vines were tiny, never more than a quarter of an inch thick. There was, however, a thin tree that the vines were wrapped around, and I thought it might just pass for a vine. So, after trying several different angles and taking a lot of shots, I finally got one that I liked. So I took it inside, and in a short while put the verse on it, and walla-walla-poof, it was done! Here's what I got.

The picture may not be all that I had in mind, but it still serves as a reminder to be sure that I'm abiding in the Vine. If I abide in Him, I will bear all kinds of sweet fruit for Him, but apart from Him, I can do nothing.

Squirrels

I love squirrels. They're so cute, with their little grey fluffy tails, but they're hard to photograph. They're rather nervous little guys for the most part, so it's tricky to really get pictures of them. But I've gotten a few this year.

This was a baby squirrel I saw earlyer this year, in springtime I believe. There were actually two of them, this one and another one a little lower down the trunk. They were perfectly frozen in their place. They didn't move a muscle. This one just sat there and let me take his picture, and so did the other one, but he wasn't in as cute of a position. Their mother was off in a tree some distance away giving me some nasty warning sounds, so I got a few pictures and then left so they could stop being frozen, but it was pretty fun. Baby squirrels are so cute!

This squirrel was one I got a picture of while I was out in the woods one summer evening. I kept hearing something crashing through the brush and landing with a thud on the ground. I looked up in a tree, and there was this squirrel, running around and picking walnuts, some of which he would drop, and others that he ate. He looks so funny! He's just sitting up there about 20 or 30 feet high, munching a walnut that is the size of his head!

This squirrel was one I saw not to long ago. Actually Dad spotted him first while sitting in his chair in the living room. He called me over and I got some pictures. We have a Bradford Pear tree on one side of the house, and this squirrel was right outside one of the windows eating Bradford Pears! I got a lot of pictures of him, eating little pears and walking on his branch.

This is one of my favorite squirrel pictures of all. We were eating lunch one day, and someone saw our half cat half monkey Elsie up in this great big tree, about 20 feet up. Then someone noticed a squirrel in the tree, and sure enough, there he was. Elsie was doing what she could to catch the squirrel, but she didn't stand a chance. The funny thing was how the squirrel played with her. He didn't run down the tree or up the tree, he just jumped around as though daring Elsie to catch him. She eventually gave up, and climbed down the tree. The squirrel ran up the tree, and that was that, but it was so funny!