C: Celebration

It was this tree that started me thinking this spring…..

Yes, it is a tree I see every day as I drive into my property.  It belongs to my neighbor, Mary. This is a poor picture to depict its grandeur.

It is starting to green, and I really wish that I had photographed it just a few weeks earlier, when there were no leaves to soften the stark branches.  Against the blue winter sky, its perfect shape has inspired me all winter.  It is what has caused me to think (overthink) about nature’s perfection.

But it was this photograph that put me over the top and made me want to write in this blog again and say to you, “Do you see the perfection, the planning, the genius of our world?” 

I do believe that nothing we do enhances it.  In fact, everywhere we touch, I’m afraid, we diminish God’s initial handiwork.  Just look at that little baby giraffe photographed against his mother, pondering the world.  Is there anything we can do to match this?

I started thinking about nature’s symmetry, its design and went in search of examples for you.  They are all obvious.  No genius in my search, here, but even though they are common examples, these thrill me, make me wonder.

Honeycomb, made by bugs, no less.  Ingenious, practical, beautiful—so beautiful that we mimic:

As pleasing as the tile floor is, as much as I would love to have it in my own home, it does not compare to the original.  Remember: we are not the originators of this beautiful design…the bees were.

Who could think up this dandelion?

…not to mention constructing it.

And think of William Blake's exhilaration: “Tiger, tiger, burning bright in the forest of the night, what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry…”

Indeed, who?

There is something about stripes in nature, isn’t there?  One of my favorites—zebras:

I never tire of seeing them.  I have a compulsion to collect photos of them, so entranced am I by their stripes.

The list goes on and on, including the everyday, the mundane (“mundane?”  Really?):

…and the fantastic:

and the patterns…

…and unending variety

…since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.  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, so that men are without excuse. 

Romans 1:19, 20.

Indeed.  Sigh.

--C