Recognizing The Creator...

In "Unbroken" Laura Hillenbrand talks about a time when Louie was on the raft and they were in the doldrums of the ocean.  He saw something so incredibly beautiful that he knew, right then and there, that there had to be a Creator.  Hillenbrand writes:

     "As he watched this beautiful, still world, Louie played with a thought that had come to him before.  He had thought it as he had watched the seabirds, marveling at their ability to adjust their dives to compensate for the refraction of light in water.  He had thought it as he had considered the pleasing geometry of the sharks, their gradation of color, their slide through the sea.  he even recalled the thought coming to him in his youth, when he had lain on the roof of the cabin in the Cahuilla Indian Reservation, looking up from Zane Grey to watch night settling over the earth.  Such beauty, he thought, was too perfect to have come about by mere chance.  That day in the center of the Pacific was, to him, a gift crafted deliberately, compassionately, for him and Phil."

During my first hike this week through Prairie State Park the very first thought that came to my mind was that I had taken for granted the beauty of this world.  The small things that God created that are "too perfect to have come about by chance."  The Apostle Paul talked about this in the book of Acts as he was trying to convince the Athenians of the One True God.  He put it like this:  

"The God who made the world and everything in it, this Master of sky and land, doesn't live in custom-made shrines or need the human race to run errands for him, as if he couldn't take care of himself. He makes the creatures; the creatures don't make him. Starting from scratch, he made the entire human race and made the earth hospitable, with plenty of time and space for living so we could seek after God, and not just grope around in the dark but actually find him. He doesn't play hide-and-seek with us. He's not remote; he's near. We live and move in him, can't get away from him!"

This week I spent time focusing on the beauty of creation and focusing on the beauty of the Creator.  The following pictures share some of my journey from the colors and shapes of the flowers, to the shape and vastness of the clouds, to the size and strength of the buffalo, to the agility and speed of a deer, and finally to the most beautiful fish I've ever seen...the rainbow trout.