Wildflowers

"The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land" (Song of Solomon 2:12). 

In late Spring Trish, my wife, and I spent a week travelling in our State's mid-west. For me this was a bucket list trip. It was the peak wildflower time ..

I've always loved the outdoors; there is a popular expression: "the great Australian outdoor way of life", and this is me, and Trish, and our children and now, their young and growing families ..

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You can see why we are world famous for wild flowers here, such glory. So reflective of our generous creator God.







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As soon as the soil type changed, or even the way the land slopes towards the sun, or is able to retain the rain's moisture, the varieties change .. a constant parade of never-seen-before delicacy and beauty.









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"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands" (Psalm 19:1).











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Late Winter and Spring were unusually rainy this year. This meant that those parts of our vast State where wildflowers bloom late were especially well blessed. They flourished and we rejoiced in the beauty. We stayed in Moora, Canamah, Jurien, Coomalo.










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"Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. This will be for the Lord's renown, for an everlasting sign, that will endure forever" (Isaiah 55:13).





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Trish can only get away in school holidays so we had to wait until very late September and early October for our adventure. Where we went, this was the best time to visit this year. Such amazing variety, such awesome beauty.



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"As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourishes" (Psalm 103:15).













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The hundreds of species were scattered so randomly, casting seed, their babies growing together, even sharing root-space sometimes, stunning ..












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We would stop the car to check out a flower and be delighted to find ten or fifteen different kinds within a few steps. Each uniquely different. So beautiful, planted by God Himself for His own joy. Probably no-one else stopped just there all year long!










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"You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands" (Isaiah 55:12).






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We had planned a driving holiday and stayed in four places. But if you knew the best spot for the time of your trip, you could easily spend a whole week in one place, just wandering around. So awesomely variable, such explosive growth.









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"Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them; let all the trees of the forest sing for joy" (Psalm 96:12).










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These meadows and roadsides are not lush or luxuriant like rainforests. I was always aware that these millions of plants are really tough. This is low rainfall country and these lovely, and often delicate looking, plants and shrubs have to fight to establish themselves and to endure. I was just so aware that I was looking at pictures of Christian life .. Beautiful, not always easy, having to push through, to hang on, and to persevere .. But, nevertheless, a glory to Jesus!







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"Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these" (Luke 12:27).











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They were scattered so randomly, casting seed, their babies growing together, even sharing root-space sometimes, stunning ..










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"My beloved is to me a cluster of henna flowers in the vineyards of En-gedi, famed for its fragrant shrubs" (Song of Solomon 1:14).











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Some were so very delicate while others seemed to be tough to survive in our sunburnt country, robust, even spiky like desert plants ..







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"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.   In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind" (John 1:1-4).




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Thank you Jesus. Amen.

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https://www.psalmsofjohn.com/2017/11/wildflowers.html

Amen.

Whales

He Has Made Everything Beautiful

I'm down in our South West, writing for PsalmsOfJohn.com, for two weeks. Trish was able to come for the linking weekend and has just headed home. We've had the most wonderful three nights and days. 

It’s springtime here and everything is exploding with new life. We've been on three very different bush walks and were completely overwhelmed at the beauty, variety, complexity and symbiosis of the Creation all around us.

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end" (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

We're at a campsite by the sea. A couple of days ago I saw dolphins so close to the shore I could almost reach out and touch them; they were catching little fishes in knee deep water! We often see metre-wide stingrays, they'll come right up and eat the scraps when fisher-folk clean their catch by the shore; every afternoon they come looking for food. Pelicans too.

Then yesterday we walked along the coast to this tiny bay (with a great surfing break), to have a prayer-time. Some trees have survived the wild coastal weather and one tree trunk is so laid down by the winds that we can sit on it, (I call these trees our "prayer cathedral", we come here at least every year). The shore is all boulders which are surrounded with anemones, muscles and sea snails and many seaweeds; a little further along is a sandy beach and great swimming. It is also teaming with birds, spiders, ants, lizards and even snakes; it's alive! Just behind the narrow beach the bush starts and is full of wildflowers and other plants, all shoulder to shoulder in our lovely "sun-burnt country".

Western Australia is world famous for its fantastic display of wildflowers every spring; there are thousands of species known nowhere else in the world. They are from the far north to the deepest south, and from the coast far into the wheat-belt and gold-fields. Some of the plants exist in just a few hundred hectares of all the world's surface! Quite wondrous.

During our prayer-time a pod of humpback whales started breaching not far out to sea; they come to the surface to blow a fountain of air and water, and then breathe in. Our first whales! We were thrilled. For me, being excited by the Creation is an every-day occurrence. But this was extra special!

"For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made .." (Romans 1:20).

During the best years of my career I developed computer systems to solve complex business problems. The objective was to get a handle on everything which affected that part of the business, map it out as data bases and data flows, and then design the computer applications, (now called "apps"), which would correctly respond to every possible mix of circumstances which may ever possibly arise, and all the mistakes managers, customers and operators may make from time to time.

(I stopped a bank one time because I'd not allowed for an operator error which occurred on my system's first day live!)

My customers liked my systems, so I suppose I was pretty good at it.

I see the Creation as 100,000,000 times more complicated than anything I ever had a hand in developing .. and yet it has worked for thousands of years, even to this day. Many scientists would have us believe that this is all accidental, and that "survival of the fittest" does not mean that the fittest "fittest" will not devour everything else and become the only remaining species!

Today we see this "devouring" happening in the finance industry and in the world since Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher invented "supply side" economics, and "globalisation" gained favour in high places. The theory is that if nations really look after their rich and the big corporations, and help to make them richer, then that prosperity will "trickle down" and lift up the rest of the people .. Well these ideas have not worked. Sure, the rich have got richer, and very quickly they are buying everything of value in the world; (just think about house prices ..) The rest of us struggle on with a smaller and smaller slice of the pie. We saw similar things historically in the days of the aristocratic estates, and during the industrial revolution.

But not so in God's creation; we see such beauty and such a mix of species and lives inter-acting, often sacrificially. Bacteria we cannot see, but I'm told that there are as many bacteria in a cupful of soil as there are people in the world! Bacteria in our gut keep us healthy and give strength to our immune system. Then there are the insects and tiny creatures which break down trash and are dinner for plants and larger creatures, right up the food chain. Only rarely do things run out, and then only in a small part of the world, and only for a short time. All the rest powers on. And the whales ! The flowers ! The birds ! The people ! So lovely .. To me, our Creator God is so represented in the Creation, it all  shows His loveliness and His care ..

In Jesus day there were perhaps 250,000,000 people in the world (an expert estimate), there was enough food for everyone and enough grazing for their herds and flocks. Today we number more than 7,500,000,000 and just about everyone is fed two or three times a day, yet there are still vast tracts of land in a "natural" state, and (often) the very best bits have been permanently set aside as National and State Parks and reserves for waterfowl, wild animals and marine life. God's wonderful biodiversity continues with humankind's stewardship.

Many media people, scientists and educators talk about evolution as though it were an established fact of all life, but there is still not one shred of evidence showing that any more-complex life form ever evolved from another, less-complex, life form! Not one clearly proven truth!

All the talk and scholarly "evolution" writing is based on hypotheses, (wild guesses), and none of it is based on truth established by scientific method. Another thing, these people all gloss over how the first life form began; they have no believable explanation for the coming of life. They do not even have a good definition for life (or for gravity either). And there is a complete denial of the spiritual world, though often in their conversation it is clear that they are discussing things of the spirit! At least two thirds (67%) of all the people in the world know that the spiritual world is real.

If evolution were true, then we would need no Creator God, everything would have developed by accident, nothing could have any value and there could be no spiritual life at all. Neither could there be love or empathy or grief! These are things we all experience and know to be an essential part of life.

But happily we do have a Creator God who gives life and light. His name is Jesus! The universe was established as a fully operational ecosystem and is still working!

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.  In him was life, and that life was the light of humanity" (John 1:1-4).

"The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.  He is before all things, and in him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:15-16).

Every day I rejoice in the Creation. I'm sure that one needs much more faith to believe in evolution than to know Jesus Christ as one's God and Saviour!

Human ingenuity has vastly expanded our ability to grow wheat, rice and other foods; crops are produced on a scale which can feed our vast urban populations. We have a responsibility to steward those parts of the Creation where we have influence; we humans have the reasoning ability and the practical skills to help maintain a sound and productive world-wide ecosystem.

"So God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.  God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground'.  Then God said, 'I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.  And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground - everything that has the breath of life in it - I give every green plant for food'. And it was so.  God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning - the sixth day" (Genesis 1:27-31).

"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge" (Psalm 19:1-2).

"Your hands made me and formed me; give me understanding to learn your commands" (Psalm 119:73).

"The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven" (Hebrews 1:3).

Thank you dear Jesus for the whales and for our opportunity to see them! So glorious! Amen.

(I began writing this post on 26th October whilst still down South, editing and getting the photos together was a big thing .. now I can post). 

Hallelujah!

• Permalink to web page

https://www.psalmsofjohn.com/2016/11/whales.html

"Whales" is now a podcast on Spotify under PsalmsOfJohn

• Public link to podcast

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1v3p6LfhEf7ip7MD5mTtfc

Amen.