Thanks for a covenant-keeping God

As I was going through some recent pictures tonight, I was reminded of the goodness of God. The world around us, though cursed because of sin, is in many ways still beautiful. For too many years I have seen this beauty without an active consciousness that this beauty screams out to us that God is the beautiful, powerful giver and sustainer of what we see. We must always look beyond the physical to the giver of the physical. How thankful I am that God is a God who creates and enjoys beauty and who created us in his image to see and appreciate beauty. A rainbow does not come because light shines through the prism of a raindrop; the sun does not rise because it runs with machine-like automation. These things come because God ordains that they come, because Jesus Christ actively upholds all things by the word of his power.

"I set my rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. It shall be, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud; and I will remember my covenant which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. The rainbow shall be in the cloud, and I will look on it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth." Genesis 9: 13-16 And we wonder if God still speaks today? How much more clearly could he have spoken? How can we just a look at a rainbow as something beautiful? It is God saying, I will continue to keep my promises as I have continued to do for thousands of years--trust me. Don't we see his words? "when I bring a cloud over the earth" "I will remember" "I will look on it to remember" (taken on the way home from work)

Matthew 5: 44, 45 "But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust." How easy it is to start to think that the sun just comes up in the morning, but it says "He makes the sun rise." We slip into deism with its clockmaker view of God so easily, but he is an active God. (taken on fall and winter mornings from our kitchen)

Psalm 104:19, 20 "He appointed the moon for seasons; The sun knows its going down. You make darkness, and it is night, In which all the beasts of the forest creep about." As he makes the sun rise, he also makes it set. He could do all of this with pure functionality, but he makes it beautiful because he is a God of beauty and creativity. (taken on a twilight train excursion in Tioga County, PA)

Psalm 65:11-13, "You crown the year with Your goodness, And Your paths drip with abundance. They drop on the pastures of the wilderness, And the little hills rejoice on every side. The pastures are clothed with flocks; The valleys also are covered with grain; They shout for joy, they also sing." And to think that this beauty is found in a sin-cursed world. What must Eden have been like! And better yet, what beauty and glory still awaits us on the other, eternal side! (autumn in Tioga County, PA)

John 7:38, 39 "'He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'" But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive." How fallen we are that we often look only at the material and do not think of the spiritual images that lie behind it. As C. S. Lewis said, these are the shadowlands, the shadows of reality that we will one day understand more completely. Is he not a good God? "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" Luke 11:13 (the forks of the Susquehanna, Sunbury, PA)