Daily Photo Parable

Photo and Commentary ©2026 by Maylan Schurch
Sabbath and Sunday, January 10 and 11, 2026

This is the ballot box in front of the Fairwood King County Library. When election time draws near, this is where Shelley and I deposit our ballots. We’re not super-early voters, but we do like to get our ballots in well before the deadline on Election Day.

And we know that if we don’t insert our ballots through the slot before (I think) 8 p.m. that evening, someone will have closed that little red “door of probation” and screwed it firmly shut. At that point, the election is done at this box. No more chance to register our decisions.

The Bible clearly tells us that even though God is longsuffering and patient, there will come a time when earth’s history will be wrapped up. An angel solemnly tells John the Revelator about this moment:

“He who is unjust, let him be unjust still; he who is filthy, let him be filthy still; he who is righteous, let him be righteous still; he who is holy, let him be holy still.” Revelation 22:11 (NKJV)

And in the very next verse, Jesus Himself chimes in:

“And behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work. (verse 12)

Has this moment arrived? No. But one day it will. To find some encouraging news about God’s judgment, including how to emerge from it safely, click the link just below.

https://www.bibleinfo.com/en/topics/judgment

Photo and Commentary ©2026 by Maylan Schurch
Friday, January 9, 2026

This past Thursday, a gloomy and sprinkly one in the area where we live, made going to our local library very attractive. I drove there to work on my sermon, but a whole lot of other people had driven there too.

This meant that I couldn’t park my car in the lot segments closest to the library, but had to nose my car up against a woven wire fence which surrounds a water-pipeline right-of-way which transfers water from the Lake Youngs reservoir to Seattle.

Once I was done at the library I returned to my car, and this is what I saw through the windshield – a handsome deer with a rack of antlers. Out of sight to the left was another one just like him.

This got me thinking about the difference between our library and the real world. Our library is top-of-the-line, recently renovated and filled with all sorts of resource materials about animals and anything else you can think of. And if you can’t find what you’re looking for, you can order from an entire network of King County libraries all over the area.

But you can’t wander among the shelves and see real nature in all its glory. To do that, you have to head outdoors, tiptoe over to the fence, and hope you’ll see just a bit of Eden.

God created these wonderful creatures and placed them in a Garden, and had no original need to fence them off from us. And one day – and it doesn’t seem it’ll be too long from now – He will create a new planet for us.

Want to learn – or review – what the Bible says about heaven? Click the link just below:

https://www.bibleinfo.com/en/topics/heaven

Photo and Commentary ©2026 by Russell Jurgensen
Thursday, January 8, 2026

This Gecko was printed on a 3D printer and has 22 moving joints that allow it to hang over my monitor to watch what I’m doing. In this case, the gecko is looking at computer code that checks some sort of connectivity. In the background a calendar displays the current month.

It makes me think about how the recent holiday season was a time of connecting for many people. Now it looks like January is a also a great time to connect.

It reminded me of the following verse reminding us to stay connected with Jesus.

They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.
Colossians 2:19

Let’s strive to refresh our connection with Jesus through reading, prayer, and practicing.

Photo and Commentary ©2026 by Darren Milam
Wednesday, January 7, 2026

If you read my last blog from a week ago, you might have noticed that I titled it “Fresh Start”, so this newest edition’s title isn’t too far off from the last. Am I running out of themes, ideas, or words? No, this particular similarity was intentional. Here’s why.

If you haven’t noticed, around this time of year, at least for the first couple weeks of January, you hear a lot about new starts, new beginnings, new goals, etc. Slowly, we see those “calls to action” disappear from the spotlight, and things go back to normal.

The beauty of God’s love and acceptance has nothing to do with the time of the year. He doesn’t forgive us ONLY during the first week of January. He doesn’t give us the opportunity to have a clean slate ONLY in the first month of the new year. No. God gives those same chances, those same do-overs, every time we genuinely ask.

This image was taken a couple days ago, at sunrise, just as the sun was peeking over the Cascade mountains, painting the morning clouds with rays of red and orange hues. It’s a new morning, a fresh start, and a new beginning.

2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV) “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”

What a marvelous and loving God we serve. Embrace His gift to us — forgiveness and redemption — each and every day.

Photo and Commentary ©2025 by Robert Howson
Tuesday, January 6, 2026

There are those among us who feel it is their life’s calling to bring about change. They devote long hours to intensive study of the Scriptures; they employ the soundest hermeneutical principles and exercise the most rigorous tenets of logic to firmly establish their position. They are right. Strangely enough, they have their mirror image representing the opposing side, those who believe it is incumbent upon them to protect the established truth from being eroded away by creeping relativism at all costs. They employ the same sacred writings, and display the same devotion to their divinely appointed task.

Should we go back just a few years, everyone would have agreed what we have shown here is the image of a Canada Goose. But things have changed. Today, those in the know would identify it as a Cackling Goose. True, it still has the identifying black head and neck of the Canada with the accompanying white chinstrap, but its overall size is more diminutive and its voice is higher. They were classified as a single species until 2004 with a variety of subspecies. Today, based upon genetic differences, there are five regional subspecies of Cackling alone.

The question remains: Does it really make any difference? The answer depends upon who you’re asking. To the taxonomist whose mission it is to add clarity and definition to the subject one would get a resounding “yes”! For listers, like myself, it provides an opportunity to darken in another square on the checklist. But to the geese? Probably not a feather. They continue being the geese they always were, and happy to do so.

Photo ©2008 and Commentary ©2025 by Chuck Davis
Monday, January 5, 2026

The image for today’s photo parable displays a rustic bridge crossing Bear Creek. on the Bare Mountain Trail. The summit of Bare Mountain protects the remnants of a long-removed Forest Service Fire Lookout. The history of the area below Bare Mountain and the head of Bear Creek is rooted in early Washington State mining, with a series of mines known as the Bear Basin Mines. The mining efforts focused on a polymetallic vein deposit offering gold, silver, copper, and zinc. The bridge in today’s photo was originally built and maintained as a valuable connection to the minerals that lay hidden in the backcountry and are now located within the area known as the Alpine Lakes wilderness.

In the Bible, bridges are used metaphorically to represent the need for building and maintaining connections between God and humankind. Ultimately, God sent his Son, Jesus to build/become the bridge that reconnects us to God’s original plan for us. “A highway will be there, a roadway, And it will be called the Highway of Holiness. The unclean will not travel on it, But it will be for him who walks that way, And fools will not wander on it” (Isaiah 35:8 NASB).

And besides all this, between us and you there is a great chasm fixed, so that those who wish to come over from here to you will not be able, and that none may cross over from there to us.’ (Luke 16:26, KJV).

A skeptic might read these verses and lose heart, thinking that the gulf is too wide, the bridge is too narrow, but Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6 NIV). When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

Just as the men who built a bridge over Bear Creek to get to the valuable minerals of the Bear Basin Mines, God, desiring to reach his most valued possessions, His sons, and daughters, built a bridge to provide a way. May the next bridge you cross remind you of Jesus, the bridge that connects humanity to eternity.

Photo and Commentary (c)2025 by Shelley Schurch
Sunday, January 4, 2026

READ, say the rocks outside the Anacortes, Washington Public Library. Are they commanding or inviting?

I’ve always seen it as an invitation, because I love to read. My parents and my two older sisters were always reading, so it seemed natural to aspire to do the same, as soon as I could get the hang of it.

But there are so many reasons why people don’t see READ as a friendly invitation. There are a myriad of difficulties that can make it challenging and frustrating for people to read.

And there are other people who just have so many other talents and interests that they don’t make time to literally focus on reading. At least not reading written material.

What other reading material is there, you may ask. I’m thinking of a friend who is quite capable of reading but not all that interested in doing so, as far as books go. Yet she excels in reading people – paying attention to them, catching on to what they’re saying and what they’re meaning, responding to them.

And yes, this reminds me of Jesus. He was well read in the Scriptures (home schooled by Mary, not taught in the rabbinic schools) and retained what He read. When the devil tempted Him after He had fasted for forty days in the wilderness and was thus at a low point, He met the devil’s words with the Word. “It is written . . .” The devil left. Unfortunately, only to regroup:

Now when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from Him until an opportune time. (Luke 4:13 NKJV)

And soon thereafter, reading got Jesus into trouble. Big trouble.

He returns to Galilee, teaches in the synagogues, “being glorified by all.” He travels back home to Nazareth, goes to synagogue on the Sabbath day, and was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. He finds and reads the place where it is written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
(Luke 4:18 -19)

So far, so good. Everyone is listening intently. But then Jesus comments on what He has read to them, and the people “were filled with wrath, and rose up and thrust Him out of the city; and they led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might throw Him down over the cliff. Then passing through the midst of them, He went His way.” (Luke 4:28b-30)

Because He spent many nights in prayer to His Father, He could read the hearts and minds of the people who surrounded Him and followed Him. He encouraged those who were genuinely seeking truth, and challenged those who were hanging on His words in order to use them against Him.

I find the following conversation to be one of the most poignant encounters Jesus has:

Now as He was going out on the road, one came running, knelt before Him, and asked Him, “Good Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?”

So Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not bear false witness,’ ‘Do not defraud,’ ‘Honor your father and your mother.’”

And he answered and said to Him, “Teacher, all these things I have kept from my youth.”

Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me.”

But he was sad at this word, and went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
(Mark 10:17;22)

Jesus looked at him, loved him, read his heart and knew what he needed most . . . but this nameless man who has gone down in history as “the rich young ruler” was so possessed by his possessions that he walked away from the One who loved him most.

As we launch out into a new week in this fresh new year, I’m asking the Holy Spirit to help me read the Word with understanding, and respond with obedience and trust. I’m also asking for help in reading people well, so that I can be a standby-er rather than a bystander.

Happy, Healthy, Hope-filled New Year to You and Yours!