We have had a stormy few days leading up to Christmas this year, with some really weird warmer weather. I took this photo above yesterday with my cell phone as I was walking across the pasture to my house. I had forgotten something at my house that I needed to fix my mom’s computer, and literally as I was walking, I decided to take a few shots of sun through the clouds with my phone. I’m always amazed at the beauty that is before us all the time, but because we see it every day, day in and day out, we forget it’s there, or fail to recognize it’s beauty.
Of course this is no accident, and we are told over and over again that this display, the very display we can now capture on a phone, shows the existence of God to us all, and therefore, we are without excuse to say we have never known God to be real, to have shown his beauty to all of us.
This is what David says in Psalm 19.1-6 where he said
The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork… in them, he has set a tent for the sun… its rising is from the end of the heavens… and there is nothing hidden from its heat
and again, what Paul says in Romans 1.20
For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
I have seen photos taken by Hubble that truly astound and boggle the mind, but sometimes we only have to go as far as to look around us, because God has displayed himself everywhere in His creation, from the Orion Nebula to our own backyard.
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I am continually amazed at what boxes we tend to put God in over and over again. I am reading this amazing book called Chasing Francis by Cron about Francis of Assisi and it has been a true eye opener to see how many different places Francis found God that we (I) have disregarded in our sophisticated and technologically advanced society today. The box we put God in on Sunday mornings is a way for us to make sure we don’t experience God’s fullness through the rest of the week.
A few days ago I read this passage and thought about the different ways we think God can or can’t talk to us. It has to be the right location, the right time, place, attitude, do’s or don’ts, with or without’s, but those are limits we put on God, not the other way around.
A few years ago I went to a U2 concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City, just three months after 9/11. Most of us in the arena that night probably knew someone who’d died in the Twin Towers; we’d lost three people in our church alone. I’ll never forget the end of the concert. As the band played the song “Walk On,” [lyrics] the names of all those who had died were projected onto the arena walls and slowly scrolled up over us, and then up toward the ceiling. At that moment the presence of God descended on that room in a way I will never forget. There we were, twenty-five thousand people standing, weeping, and singing with the band. It suddenly became a worship service; we were pushing against the darkness together. I walked out dazed, asking myself, “What on earth just happened?’ Of course, it was the music. For a brief moment, the veil between this world and the world to come had been made thin by melody and lyric. If only for a brief few minutes, we were all believers.
We may look and listen for God in the “normal” places, but He is present in His creation… birds, music, paintings, literature. Maybe we don’t hear God outside of Sunday morning “church” because we aren’t looking at his entire creation.
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The Creation of Adam is a fresco painted on the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo some time around 1511 that depicts the story in Genesis of God breathing life into Adam. This painting in Vatican City is probably one of the most famous paintings in the world and was restored in the late 80′s early 90′s, and is now being used by the University of Georgia in the form of a flyer tacked up in the students dorms to educate and promote the use of condoms. All other issues aside, are we to think that university level students are unaware of a condom and its use?
Apparently UGA finished up Sexual Responsibility Week this past week (this is something we are now doing in higher education?) and this poster was created to promote… sexual health and created this STD(?) poster/flyer. It reads:
Condom Tip #5, Carefully open condom wrappers with your fingers – don’t use a sharp object.
I guess people will use anything now in the promotion of a product, but do we care any more, but this was an ad put out by the University of Georgia, not some marketing group. There will be no outrage for this because it is not making fun of the Koran, Islam, or the Muslim faith of any kind. If that were the case, people would be sued, fired, and apologies issued (although I do see that the University of Georgia has since apologized in some manner). There is just nothing that is out of bounds in the worldly view when ridiculing or making fun of the Christian faith, so this shouldn’t be much of a surprise to Believers.
The Catholic League is none to happy about it and apparently released this statement.
“I hasten to add that the University of Georgia would never choose a depiction of Muhammad to hawk condoms. Indeed, only a few years ago an inoffensive depiction of this Islamic figure in a Danish cartoon led to murder and churches being burned to the ground. One can only imagine what would have happened had he been portrayed pushing condoms to youth.”
Question is I guess, do we really care anyway? After all, I did find a similar likeness used by the Simpson’s, although they weren’t being portrayed promoting a form of birth control. We know this will never change until the new heaven and new earth are upon us? A quick scour of the left wing blogs give quite a flippant view, but I haven’t really found to much outcry against such use of the historical painting. Should we care?
I would hope that our hometown school of Auburn University would restrain from such use but they did feel it was necessary last year to have a gay pride day and parade for Auburn last year, so I guess I would take the flyer over promoting a lifestyle (being that there was no heterosexual pride parade but that’s a whole other set of topics all together).
Being somewhat interested in design and marketing in today’s web 2.0 world, I would love to know what department created this flyer in the first place. It looks and reads like a 1960′s ad… is this all we can come up with on a University level these days?
I would think at this point the University of Georgia has taken the flyers down from their dorms but if not, I would love to hear from a UGA dorm student or anyone that can email over a higher quality image of the flyer. If so, send it on to my email address scott.fillmer [at] gmail and I will post it here instead of the one above.
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So today I went to see Defiance the Movie. This was the story about the Bielski partisans a group of Polish Jews that came together for common protection and to oppose the German occupation of their homeland. I won’t give the story line away here in this post but it reminds me that those in my generation can not even begin to comprehend sacrifice, pain, and suffering that took place in the world in the early 1940′s in WWII.
I had never heard of or read anything about or known anything about the Bielski partisans group before today. A group that lived in the German forest for several years until the war ended. Most of us who live in the free world will never have to understand or deal with loss like these people. Never have to make decisions they had to make. Here are a few pics from the movie (all images of course are copyright of Paramount / Vantage VIP).
Regardless of the movie’s historical accuracy compared to the theatrical take, it made me more aware of what happened around 1941-1943 and promted me to look up information about the Bielski family and how they survived.
Often, at least in the U.S., we take our freedom for granted. We successfully transferred political power last week from President Bush to President Obama. No one was executed, no one was exiled, and whatever the problems we face in this country, we are still free.
Free to learn
Free to make our own decisions
Free to speak
Free to travel where we choose
Free to disagree
Free to write our own opinion
Free to create
Free to marry who we choose
Free to vote
Free to worship how we choose
Freely created,
Equal in God’s sight.
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This week I will do a shortened version of the Image of the Day, today being the only one, at least on the blog. You can follow several images I will post throughout the week via Twitpic on Twitter if you so desire.
I took this shot a few years ago and I am always amazed at what the cloud formations can turn into so quickly. This image in the clouds during a sunset lasted only a few minutes, but it was enough for me to pull out the camera and take a shot of the fire in the clouds.
Camera data: Body Nikon D100, Shutter 1/160 sec, f/5.6, ISO-200, focal length 120mm
The beauty of the sun in the clouds, but it is really cool when it opens up like this and displays something that none of us can reproduce ourselves. You can just see the trees at the bottom of the image but the hole that the clouds opened up just screamed for a photo. It only lasted a few minutes at most. I have several other shots taken in sequence but the hole closed up very fast.
How often do we look at the clouds for great photo opportunities?
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There are a few wildflowers that really capture a state, and the top two that come to mind are the Texas Bluebonnets and the Colorado Columbine. The Colorado Columbine is actually native to Canada but has really become a symbol of Colorado since it was adopted as the official state flower on April 4, 1899 by an act of the General Assembly.
The Colorado Columbine Flower in Bloom
This flower has so many different faces and can be photographed in so many different poses that one shot does not do this flower justice. Below is the classic head on shot as I like to call it. When trying to shoot closeup images of flowers it is great if you can get the green leaves in the background as this will make the flower pop off the page. I managed to get a little green in the bottom right corner but would have loved that all the way around the image.
What are your favorite wildflowers of the Spring and Summer months?
