Wide Angle

A few months ago I bought a wide-angle lens for my camera. A wide angle lens has the ability of bringing in a wider angle of light to the camera. It makes my pictures able to contain more of what is really there than I can get without it. To illustrate, if I was taking a picture of the tree below without a wide angle lens, I would only be able to get 1/5 or even 1/6 of the image below.

I ought to note that these images are not only wide-angle, but also panoramic, which means that they are many images "stitched" together. I take several pictures and then put them into a computer program that "sews" them together, making almost a picture "quilt" where all of the images line up perfectly. The picture above was probably about 5 images stitched together, and the one below was probably between 15 and 20.

The reason I got the wide-angle lens was so that I could photograph more of God's creation. So many times when I am photographing something, especially in nature, the scope of beauty is much greater than my normal lens can capture in one picture. With a wide-angle and/or panoramic method, I am able to increase the scope of beauty I can contain in one picture. The picture below is a perfect example. It is one of my favorites right now, and it would have been totally impossible without a wide-angle lens and panoramic technology.

The concept of a wide-angle lens illustrates a spiritual truth, I think. Like panoramas and wide-angle images, the goal is to make visible more beauty than is naturally visible.

The concept applies to a Christian's endeavor to know God. God is infinite, and "surpasses knowledge" (Ephesians 3:19). However, that should not deter Christians from seeking to know more of Him. Just because we will never know Him fully doesn't mean we will never know Him more. We need to expand, or widen our knowledge of God in order to see more of His majestic beauty.

How do you do that? One major necessity is time. For Christians, simple time will result in a greater knowledge of God. Experiencing life with God will inevitably lead to a greater knowledge of Him. But perhaps the most significant, joyful, and exciting way to widen our knowledge of God is to study Him in His Word. "But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" (Philippians 3:7-8). There is nothing in the world that could be more important than knowing Christ. In fact, if you compare anything with the worth of knowing Him, they fade into mere garbage!

We need to learn to expand our spiritual "lenses" with a wider angle, that we me see and know more of our unfathomable God. It is so worth the effort!

Hummingbirds

It was a beautiful, blue-sky morning, and I went outside to get some pictures. But I never got any pictures of the sky, for I never even made it off of our front porch! I got caught taking pictures of these tiny little hummingbirds who had come to visit our feeders.

They were absolutely adorable, and there were really quite a few of them.

What I found the funniest about them was their self-importance. There was one in particular who seemed to consider that he was the greatest of all hummingbirds, and that all the feeders were therefore his. He defended that assumption as well! He was a vicious attacker of all hummingbirds who dared to enter his domain.

They all seemed just a little bit arrogant. They all wanted to be the big shot. They each seemed to consider themselves the biggest and the best. I watched one fly up to a branch where he just sat down and puffed himself up, looking so proud. Very cute, but he was just so small! It was so funny to see that tiny little guy apparently feeling so big and brave.

Yet I got to thinking how very much I can be like that. I am so tiny and puny, yet how easily I can puff myself up in my own eyes. I am often tempted to think MUCH more of myself than my size and status merit, and ultimately I only end up looking silly. It is not glorious "to seek one's own glory" (Proverbs 25:27). 

Let's not worry about seeking our own glory. Let's worry more about doing all to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31).

In The Beginning

For the past three nights, I was privileged to go outside to an open field after the sun had set. The first night I went alone, and the moon had just risen. The field was lit up by the moonlight. Very beautiful. The second two nights, Tyler and I went together, and the moon came up later so we were able to see the stars very clearly. It is truly incredible!

Last night in particular was gorgeous. Tyler saw two shooting stars (meteorites), and we could see the edge of the Milky Way. I tried to photograph the Milky Way, but it is very hard to see in the picture:

It was gorgeous nonetheless. Looking at the Milky Way edgewise is a crazy thought. I've seen pictures of the Milky Way, and it looks like a disk. So to look up there and realize that you're looking along a disk edgewise that 1) you are in the middle of, and 2) is absolutely HUGE is really something. In a sense, when you look up at the stars, it looks like a black sheet with white spots on it. There's no perception of depth. But when you try to fathom how far away those stars are . . . It's awesome.

To further boggle the mind, recognize that all of those stars and all of that incredible amount of space were created by God, at His Word, and that before then none of these stars even existed. But even then, His Word was. The Word, identified as Christ Jesus Himself in John 1, was in the beginning. He was with God, and He was God (John 1:1). His identification as "the Word" is fascinating indeed. He was God's "creative agent," the tool He used to create both the living physical world as well as living spiritual beings. What a fascinating concept! Worth meditating on, without a doubt.

Tyler got some REALLY amazing star pictures. You can see his work on his flickr, found in the links page above.

Unrestrained

On Saturday of last week I went outside to see if the sunset was going to be very pretty. It was, but I failed to get any good pictures of it. However, there was a most unexpected turn of events. After checking the sunset I was about to go inside, but decided instead to go through our woods toward the eastern field (opposite the sunset). It was a spider-webby trip, but I made it. It was well worth it :)

That Saturday evening, I was staring an upcoming difficulty in the face: BIBL 104, an online college course with Liberty University (LU). I've taken college courses at LU before, so I know the difficulty that is ahead. Like my journey through the dark, spidery forest, I know that the road before me holds the potential to be not-so-fun at times.

What I don't yet know, however, is the beauty and glory that may be at the end. Indeed, God promises that no matter what happens through the course of events, He will not restrain His mercy from me.

(if you can't read it, just click on the image)

What a hope! And it is not just a hope for me, for every Christian is in a constant struggle that can be VERY hard at times. Let us remember that no matter how difficult or trying our circumstances, God will not restrain His mercy from us. Think about that. It's amazing!

Just a Moth

This is an ordinary, boring moth. He is not exceptionally large, not a very beautiful shape, and not brightly colored. He is dull, brown, and simple. He's not trying to draw attention to himself, in fact, he's shying away from attention. I never even bothered to identify him. He was too ordinary and commonplace.

However, I don't think he's disappointed that God made him boring. If he were brightly colored, he'd be a prime target for predators. His dull colors are his safety. That's why God designed him that way. So he is just content to be camouflaged, for he recognizes that living out his God-given design is his greatest good.

The same goes for us. The safest place for us to be is right where God has us. We don't need to try to make more of ourselves than we are. It's so easy to pursue glory "from one another" (John 5:44), but all we really need to do is settle down to be who and what God commands us to be. His design for us is our greatest good. Let's take a lesson from this boring little moth and settle for being boring. We don't need to be glorious. 

Bacteria

"And from the throne came a voice saying, 'Praise our God, all you his servants, you who fear him, small and great'" (Rev. 19:5).

Clearly even the tiniest of God's creation praises His name! Incredible.

Wild Plums!

Two weeks ago I made a pretty wild discovery: Wild Plums! Earlier in the spring of this year, Tyler and I found this beautiful tree.

I first identified it as some variety of wild cherry, but I was wrong.

The flowers had turned into fruits by the month of May, and that was the first hint that they were not wild cherries. Cherries never grow singularly, like these fruits obviously did.

Then, months later in August, the fruits finally ripened. I picked one, and investigated it online. I tried SO hard to identify it, but finally I had to settle for it being some sort of wild cherry that I just couldn't identify. Given that (as long as it is growing on a tree) all cherries are edible, I cut it up and gave some of the fruit to Mom and Hannah to try eating. Mom said it tasted somewhat like a plum, so I looked it up. I couldn't believe it, but the images were EXACTLY the same. My fruit was, almost without a doubt, a Wild Plum!

What I hadn't realized, however, was that the plum tree was absolutely LOADED with these plums. I thought there were only one or two, but when I got a better look at it from the open side, there were hundreds! 

I found a Wild Plum Jelly Recipe, and it called for 5 pounds of Wild Plums, so that was my goal. So I started picking . . .

and picking . . .

occasionally washing . . .

and picking some more . . .

filling up the bucket . . .

more and more . . .

and more!

Finally, I got my five pounds. It took three days, but I got them all. Then, during the weekend, Mom helped me make the jelly. We began by putting all five pounds of plums into a pot with four cups of water. We then simmered them for half-an-hour . . .

until it looked about like this. As it simmered, the skins broke and the juices came out. Pretty neat looking.

We then poured the simmered plum goop into a pot through colander with four layers of cheesecloth over it. Doesn't it look delicious?

Incredibly, that beautiful pink liquid is what was coming out of the goop! We were shooting for five cups of that juice. We got nearly four, which Mom said would be enough.

Then it all went into a pot, and we added the sugar, brought it to a rolling boil, and let that go for a minute or so. Then we ladeled it into jars, Mom did all the sealing off stuff, and vwala! Wild Plum Jelly!

It was GOOD!

I'm just amazed that we can live in a place for fifteen years and STILL be making discoveries! It's amazing that all this time there's been a wild plum tree and we haven't even known it. Thanks for sprinkling surprises all over this world, Father!

Isaiah 30:18

Wow!

Moss

Time for a close-up look at one of the "lesser" organisms in God's immensely great creation.

Everyone is probably familiar with moss. It's typically green and soft, and seems to like to grow in rich soil, on rotting trees, and on rocks. Moss is common (at least here!) and not something that naturally draws your attention. But that does not mean it isn't incredible.

Here is a very healthy clump of moss that is growing in our woods out back.

We will examine this moss from the top down, starting with these little strands, called Seta.

This is the tippy tip of one of those Seta. It is technically known as the calyptra, which protects the capsule (also known as a sporangium). The capsule contains the spores, which are the reproductive structures of a moss, perhaps the equivalent of a normal plant's seed, only much smaller.

This is the seta, the skinny little stem that supports the calyptra (which protects the capsule, which contains the spores). It grows from the gametophyte (which we will see next) and channels nutrients to the capsule.

This is the gametophyte. It's the part that you would normally think of when talking about moss. It's the green, sort of leafy part. However, they are not leaves, for unlike leaves they do not have veins for transporting water and nutrients. They do, however, have special tissues for transporting water.

This is the part we would normally consider to be the root, but mosses do not have roots. They have rhizoids, which anchor the moss to the soil (or rock, or stump).

I'm not exactly sure what this is :) It's connected to the rhizoid, so it may be a part of that, but I'm not certain. What I am fairly certain of, however, is that they are strands of cells. They were really neat to look at though!

The amazing thing about the tiny little cell-strands in the two images above is that they are totally invisible without a microscope. I didn't even know that they were there until I looked in the microscope. So much for being familiar with moss!

That is one of the amazing things about God's creation: there's always more to be discovered. No one person will ever get to a point where they know EVERYTHING there is about creation. It is far too diverse, far too complicated, far too incomprehensible. "O LORD, how manifold are Your works! In wisdom have You made them all; the earth is full of Your creatures" (Psalm 104:24). Some parts of God's creation are simply too great to comprehend, and others too small. So diverse and multi-faceted!

"Behold, these are the outskirts of His ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of Him! But the thunder of His power who can understand?" (Job 26:14). Now think about that. All of this creation, so diverse, so impossible to understand, and it is but the outskirts of His ways! Only a whisper of Himself! How great, diverse, and incredible then must our God be?