Last week my friend Gary Fawver sent me some samples of his wonderful photos plus a quote from the book Your God Is Too Safe by Mark Buchanan.  In it Mark rather negatively compares his own photography to that of his brother, a professional photographer—a rueful comparison I think many of us make when we compare our photography to that of professionals.  For Mark, taking a good picture takes a lot of thought, preparation, and a good bit of fumbling.  For his brother, Adam, taking a good picture is virtually second nature.  What’s the difference?  Practice.

[Photo by Ariane Vert-Dore']

Mark explains:

That is how it is with a person who is practiced.  And that’s how it is with those who practice the presence of God.  Too often we are, in our relationship with God, like me and photography: Our knowing Him is sporadic and sparse and not much worth the effort if we consider the results.  My thoughts rarely turn to consider how a scene, an event, a face might be photographed.  That’s just not under my skin or in my bones.  I’m not practiced.  That’s no tragedy.  It only means my photographs are not much worth seeing.  But this is tragic: when my thoughts rarely turn to consider and encounter the God who is there and here.

The secret remedy for almost all our slow heartedness is to practice the presence of God.  This one thing has the power to break borderland’s gravitational hold.  Jesus walks the road to Emmaus with those disciples, if only they noticed.  Jesus is in the midst of our days and our events, our weeks and weaknesses, our rising up and our lying down.  If only we noticed.

Because my brother is a practiced photographer, you get the sense, walking with him and talking with him, that there is no moment, no setting, no place, no person who would fail to be one of photographic interest.  When we practice the presence of God, we will come to a point in our relationship with Him at which we walk in continual expectancy.  Each moment brims with the possibility of encounter and discovery.  We become conscious that each breath is given by Him, each word is spoken in His hearing.

We drive down the street, stand at the sink, pluck weeds from the garden, hammer nails into planks, hang clothes on a line, write a poem on a napkin.  We preach, we pray, we sing, we weep.  In all these things, God is present.  Whether we notice Him or not is a matter of vision, attentiveness, alertness—practice.  (pp. 141-143)

I pray for myself that I could get into such a practice and stay there.

See you outdoors,

Dean

Hey, WOC friends, we’ve added a new feature to this site: access to our own photo group!  It’s the WOC Photo Group, and you can access it here or at the new link at the bottom of the link list on the right sidebar.

If you enjoy taking and sharing photos, you can now do that on a site dedicated to showcasing the wonder of creation as photographed by friends of WOC—with new friends heartily invited to join (pass this on to photographer friends)!

You can access the site at this URL:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/wocwonder/

I started out the collection with some photos I took at Joshua Tree National Park a couple years ago, but I would love to see those eclipsed by your great shots.

Here is the group description:

WOC Photo Group icon

WOC Photo Group is a public group open to those who enjoy taking photos of the wonders of creation. It is administered by Dean Ohlman, who is the host of RBC Ministries’ website: WonderOfCreation.org. Those who submit photos are encouraged to pick only their best photos, and not load up the site with duplicates or photos too dark, too light, or too fuzzy.

They don’t have to be Wow! shots. In fact, nice collections from various locations or with themes (say like prairie plants, wildflowers, fall color, and so forth would be great—as would trip shots (Yosemite, Yellowstone, and other national or state park or scenic vacation spots).

These will be public photos available for others to view and use, so please don’t post them if you want to copyright them. Some of them well appear from time to time on the Wonder of Creation Website with photographer’s name attached.

See you outdoors . . . via your camera lens,

Dean

These are the WOC Photo Group rules:

Keep in mind that the theme of the WOC Photo Group is the wonder of creation, and although children and grandchildren are the greatest of wonders, please do not post photos of kids alone. Showing kids enjoying the wonders of creation, however, is great.

Also help to keep the site sharp with photos that are not too dark, too light, or out of focus–remembering that if you have ten great shots of one thing, just choose the best one or two. Paying attention to those factors will make it an inviting site for all visitors.

If a particular natural wonder brings to mind a Scripture passage or a good quotation or stanza from a hymn or poem, be sure to add those to your commentary.

So dust off that digital camera lens of yours and start shooting!  We’d love to see your stuff highlighted there.

See you outdoors!

Dean

Nate Simons and I have a lot in common: our love of God’s creation, our interest in learning everything we can about the biology and geology of our region, our fascination with ecology (how everything works together in relationship to mankind), and our enthusiasm for making creation care a part of every believer’s life.

Where we differ is that Nate does creation care and I mostly talk about it.  I know that both are probably necessary, but I do have to confess that I am humbled by the prodigious amount of creation care work Nate and his team have been able to accomplish.  Nate heads up Blue Heron Ministries near Angola, Indiana—mostly in Steuben County.  It is a part of the ministry of Presbyterian Chapel of the Lakes, and I had the joy of seeing that work firsthand last Saturday.

The majority of the work is the restoration of some of the prairie that made up about fifteen percent of the state—primarily in the northwestern and north central part of Indiana.  Originally Indiana had 20 million acres of forested land of which only 2000 old-growth acres remain.  My home state, Michigan, however, was almost totally wooded with an estimated original prairie extent of less than one percent—most of it adjacent to Indiana.  So even though as a kid I walked to school along Prairie Street, I’m not sure if there ever was a prairie there.  For sure I didn’t know what a Midwestern prairie should look like.  Thanks to Blue Heron Ministries, now I do.  And I’m impressed—impressed again at the wonder of God’s creation in its “vast array.” [Photo: Cardinal Flower]

Because Blue Heron Ministries is an intense local work done by the caring hands of some dedicated volunteers, it does not have the time, personnel, or need for a website—which, in a sense, is refreshing.  Here are a few websites for you to visit to get an idea of the kind of work Nate and his crew does:

http://www.acreslandtrust.org/clientimages/44551/q443.pdf

http://www.nanps.org/photos_praries.aspx

http://gardenfaerie.blogspot.com/2009/08/native-plant-walk.html

The plant photos in this post are ones I took on my Saturday tour.  Many of these were new to me.  I even got to add a couple more species of golden rod, of which there are fifty species in North America (around ninety worldwide).

See you outdoors!

Dean

Stiff Goldenrod

Lobelia

Immersed in the prairie

See you outdoors!

Dean

A refreshing development in evangelical theological studies is the new emphasis on the “new earth.” Refreshing to me in particular because of the “Beam me up, Lord” mentality of my generation, a mindset that concentrated on the Rapture of the Church and the Second Coming of Christ.  It was heaven-centered, but focused on an ethereal heaven that we would either be “raptured” into alive or the souls our dead bodies had inhabited would be resurrected into.  It was somewhere out there; but where was “there”?

As a boy that uncertainty plus the belief I got at church that we would spend eternity singing hymns “somewhere beyond the blue” sure wasn’t something I looked forward to.  I enjoyed catching crawdads, frittering away hours in farmer Kelly’s woods, playing “kick the can” with my friends, and just hanging around at home smelling supper and reading Sugar Creek Gang books.  That nagging fear of being bored to death with heaven hung on well into adulthood, but I never talked about it.  It seemed ungodly and un-Christian.

That’s why the realization I came to a couple decades ago kindled a new hope in my heart—the understanding of the biblical promise that heaven was going to come to earth, and the earth be redeemed by “the Lamb who was slain” (Revelation 5) and would be refreshed (Acts 3:19), reunified Ephesians 1:9-10), restored (Acts 3:20), reconciled to God (Colossians 1:20): the joyous “Five Rs” of our future existence on God’s good earth!

This truth was unfolded aptly by my friend Mike Wittmer, associate professor of systematic theology at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, in his encouraging book Heaven Is a Place On Earth:

Our temporary stay in heaven—what theologians call the intermediate state—is not the primary focus of Scripture.  There are only a few verses that allude to it.  Scripture is relatively silent on our intermediate state in heaven because it is not the Christian hope.  The Christian hope is not merely that our departed souls will rejoice in heaven, but that, as 1 Corinthians 15 explains, they will reunite with our resurrected bodies.

And where do bodies live?  Not in heaven:  That’s more suitable for spiritual beings like angels and human souls.  Bodies are meant to live on earth, on this planet.  So the Christian hope is not merely that someday we and our loved ones will die and go to be with Jesus.  Instead, the Christian hope is that our departure from this world is just the first leg of a journey that is round-trip.  We will not remain forever with God in heaven, for God will bring heaven down to us.  As John explains his vision in Revelation 21:1-4, he “saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God” to the earth, accompanied by the thrilling words, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and He will live with them.”

In short, Christians long for the fulfillment of Emmanuel, the divine name that means “God with us.”  We don’t hope merely for the day when we go to live with God, but ultimately for that final day when God comes to live with us.

That’s not a message I heard preached as a kid but really would love to have heard.  It was hard to live all those years thinking that my future state was going to be boring—and to feel guilty because of that feeling.  Later in his book Mike describes what that future state might look like as foretold in part by the ancient prophet Isaiah.  He concludes with this thought:

Because redemption restores rather than obliterates creation, we will find that its completion in our next life will be the fulfillment of our humanity.  Nothing will be more satisfying than dwelling with our Father on the earth we call home, enjoying the well-rounded, flourishing lives he intended for us all along.  Our next life will look an awful lot like this one, lacking only the suffering that arises from sin.

[Photo by Inspics: http://inspiks.com/]

Now that’s a heaven this old boy can look forward to!

See you outdoors!

Dean

Remember the old gun right’s chant: “They will take my gun away from me when they can pry it from my cold dead fingers?”  I sort of feel that way about my pocket knife.  With the new tough air travel security measures, of course, the TSA won’t let me take this vital tool—this necessity—with me. And not having my Swiss Army knife with me aboard airplanes leaves me feeling half dressed.  I’ve had a pocket knife for as long as I can remember—starting with those awful Boy Scout knives with gouges so dull you could hardly carve your name in your study hall desk.  Many a beech tree, however, did yield its smooth bark to my blade.  [There's actually an art museum in Italy that showcases beech tree carving!] I could even skin a possum with it (all the while wondering why no one was interested in buying possum hides!).

When I got my first Victorinox Swiss Army knife, however, I felt like a car aficionado who’d just gotten a Ford Cobra.  Man, was it sweet.  I got it around the time Marge and I were engaged—meaning almost 44 years ago.  That knife, of course, is long gone.  But I’ve had plenty more (and plenty more varieties) since then.  Enumerating all the places where I have them tucked, I believe I have about seven of them.

And each one is absolutely critical for its purpose: sawing down hiking sticks, carving hiking sticks, pruning house plants, clipping loose threads and hanging hangnails, skinning road kill (got a nice newly dead mink once when doing the RBC highway clean-up!), clipping McDonalds’ straws to the right size for our boys when they were little, making little catamaran sailboats at restaurant tables for our grandchildren, carving willow whistles, cutting yucca pods to find moth larvae, shaving bark from sassafras roots—just about anything that any regular Joe or Jane would want to have one for.

My "Ambassador" model

Now, I’ve been fortunate enough to remember in time to put my knives in my checked bags at the airport; so none have yet been confiscated.  But I don’t think the security people recognize how vulnerable and insecure many of us feel without our pocket knives.  And what about emergencies?  What if someone needs an emergency tracheotomy and no one on the plane has a pocket knife?  Perhaps even an emergency appendectomy or frontal lobotomy.  Have they really thought about that?

It seems to me that many of the security officials are old enough to remember MacGyver who saved himself, helpless children, maidens in distress, and the world many times because he had a Hunter or Tinker Swiss Army knife.  How shortsighted we can sometimes be.  Let me be the first to predict that something dreadful is going to happen because responsible knife carriers like me are not allowed to keep them in our pockets on board airplanes!

On a lighter vein, however, you might enjoy clicking on the “Wonder Kids” page on the top options bar and read what my friend Rusty Prichard says about kids needing knives.  Or just click here.

See you outdoors!

Dean