"..the strange glory of ordinary things."

Tassel Weed

Today, I was shocked to realize that if I only posted one photograph out of my Flickr account every single day, without uploading one more photograph into that account, it would take me 20 years to post every single photograph. Twenty years.

Of course, many of those photographs are of people and places that most Pollywog Creek readers could care less about, but still. Twenty years.

Many of my photographs are of the same subjects. I have a gazillion photographs of zinnias, goldfinches, and fox squirrels, and something less than that of the painted bunting, wildflowers, frogs, lizards, dragonflies and butterflies. I never cease to be amazed at the tiniest details of even a weed like the tassel flower - details that I am certain that I would overlook without my camera.

Discovering that photograph of a tassel flower (can you believe that something so beautiful is a weed?!?!?!?) is when my photography journey began. My daughter Emily was the real photography buff, I was just playing around with my simple point and shoot camera. When I took that photo of the tassel flower, I didn't even know my camera had a macro setting or auto-focusing.

Clearly, I am just an amateur - and a mediocre one at that.

Bill Walsh is not an amateur and he has posted reason #3 in his series, “9 Reasons I’m a Photographer - Look for God Where He's Hidden. Walsh states...

"In order to glimpse the glory of God where he hides himself in creation, we actually have to engage with creation."

Though the photographs Walsh has posted in this series have been spectacular photographs of places and people around the world, I can "engage with creation" right where I am. God hides himself in the tassel weeds and the insects - and the zinnias, goldfinches, and fox squirrels, of course - as much as He is hidden in the Grand Canyon.

Walsh links to a post by John Piper - 10 Resolutions for Mental Health in which Piper shares key points from a lecture by Clyde Kilby, one of his Wheaton College professors:

"That night Dr. Kilby had a pastoral heart and a poet’s eye. He pled with us to stop seeking mental health in the mirror of self-analysis, but instead to drink in the remedies of God in nature. He was not naïve. He knew of sin. He knew of the necessity of redemption in Christ. But he would have said that Christ purchased new eyes for us as well as new hearts. His plea was that we stop being unamazed by the strange glory of ordinary things."

I'm so tempted to cut and paste the whole thing. It's that good. I hope that you will read and be inspired by Bill Walsh's post, Dr. Piper's post, and Dr. Kilby's 10 resolutions.