Daily Photo Parable

Photo and Commentary ©2024 by Darren Milam
Wednesday, November 6, 2024

If you’ve been driving for a while and/or you enjoy occasionally glancing out the car window, you’ve likely noticed the words “Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear” on side mirrors. This safety warning helps drivers check their mirrors before changing lanes or moving in that direction. There’s science behind this statement (thanks to convexity) and likely a bit of liability caution as well.

If you already understand the science, have looked it up, or don’t particularly care – that’s OK. The takeaway is that in this mirror, things appear smaller than they actually are. There are many times in life when we might feel small and insignificant. In those moments, it would be so comforting to know that someone is close by and they care for us, even if we still feel “small.” The beautiful news is, we do have someone who cares for us, very close.

Psalm 145:17-19

The Lord is righteous in all His ways,
Gracious in all His works.
The Lord is near to all who call upon Him,
To all who call upon Him in truth.
He will fulfill the desire of those who fear Him;
He also will hear their cry and save them.

 I did take the liberty of bolding the section that David calls out – the Lord is near to all who call upon Him. What a blessed reminder. When we look in our own mirror and don’t see the value, our loving Father is right there beside us, seeing us through His eyes – hugely important. He’s so close, He can see the real us, the one who He died for. We are so far from being insignificant. We may not be worthy of His love and protection, but to God, we are VERY significant.

The next time you are changing lanes, and you glance at that mirror, remember God is MUCH closer than you think (and that’s a good thing).

Photo and Commentary ©2024 by Robert Howson
Tuesday, November 5, 2024

As one of the seven species of pelican in the world, the Brown Pelican shares the oversized beak and gular pouch along with its relatives, but it’s one of the smallest of the group. Some have referred to it as being comically elegant, and it’s easy to see why that description fits well. This paradox is accentuated due to the fact that it has webbing between all four of its toes making it an excellent swimmer, but a very awkward walker on land. However, it excels in the air where it is as graceful in flight as it is clumsy on land. It differs from its cousin, the White Pelican in that it dives for its food, sometimes from 60 feet or more in the air, ending with a barrel roll just before hitting the water which may completely submerge it. But it momentarily pops to the surface with its throat pouch full of water and fish. The water is then spilled from the edges of the beak before it swallows its prey.

This difficult maneuver is not easily accomplished as the results show. While fledging success may be as high as 100% for the first chick hatched from a brood of three, the challenges facing it have just begun. Evidently the adults don’t teach the young how to fish, and this must be acquired through instinct, trial, and error. This may take a year to accomplish, and the mortality rate for these first year birds runs between 70 and 90% due to the complexity of learning to dive.

Fortunately for us, we are not left without teaching and forced to resort to a trial and error approach. God realized our need and spoke to Aaron concerning this: “and you are to teach the people of Israel all the statutes that the Lord has spoken to them by Moses.” Leviticus 10:11 NIV) Apparently He realized just giving the law was not enough for slow-minded mankind, we needed to be taught it as well. Thank God for His willingness to use people like faulty Aaron.

Photo and Commentary ©2024 by Cheryl Boardman
Monday, November 4, 2024

I love watching dragonflies and damselflies as they fly and perch and hover over a pond (ponds seem to be the best places to see them close up) or some other body of water. This eight spotted skimmer was really beautiful!

Paul wrote an interesting description of resurrection (by including creation) to the Corinthians. Here is The Message version :

Some skeptic is sure to ask, “Show me how resurrection works. Give me a diagram; draw me a picture. What does this ‘resurrection body’ look like?” If you look at this question closely, you realize how absurd it is. There are no diagrams for this kind of thing. We do have a parallel experience in gardening. You plant a “dead” seed; soon there is a flourishing plant. There is no visual likeness between seed and plant. You could never guess what a tomato would look like by looking at a tomato seed. What we plant in the soil and what grows out of it don’t look anything alike. The dead body that we bury in the ground and the resurrection body that comes from it will be dramatically different.

You will notice that the variety of bodies is stunning. Just as there are different kinds of seeds, there are different kinds of bodies—humans, animals, birds, fish—each unprecedented in its form. You get a hint at the diversity of resurrection glory by looking at the diversity of bodies not only on earth but in the skies—sun, moon, stars—all these varieties of beauty and brightness. And we’re only looking at pre-resurrection “seeds”—who can imagine what the resurrection “plants” will be like!

1 Corinthians 15:35-41

Photo and Commentary ©2024 by Maylan Schurch
Sabbath and Sunday, November 2 and 3, 2024

It was this past July when I first spotted this aisle-cleaning robot at a local Winco Foods. Even before I saw it, I heard a persistent beeping like a delivery truck backing up, and soon the machine crawled cautiously around a corner toward me.

What you’re looking at in the photo is the back of the device. Notice the vacuum cleaner tube fitted into the groove, ready for a human staffer to clean up spills the robot can’t? On top, just this side of the yellow flashing light, is a large red button—probably an emergency “stop” switch. Up at the front you can see a steering wheel, for when the robot needs to be set on “manual” and operated by a rider. The black-and-yellow strap warns kids that no, you can’t climb up and ride. And out of sight on the front end is a large camera eye.

Pretty neat, right? I watched it awhile, and sure enough, it was moseying down aisle after aisle, pausing thoughtfully from time to time to calibrate what its camera was seeing. If it came along an aisle already occupied with a customer’s cart, it would stop and patiently wait till the coast was clear.

Know where I’m going with this? Sure you do. Isn’t it great that God didn’t design us to be mere robots, responding only to sensory input without the ability to ponder life from a wider perspective? Even what we sometimes call the “lower animals” aren’t purely instinctive, but exhibit a rudimentary power of choice.

In fact, the Bible has a lot to say about the Creator and His artistry. Click this link to get the full story:

https://www.bibleinfo.com/en/topics/creation-and-evolution

Photo and Commentary ©2024 by Maylan Schurch
Friday, November 1, 2024

As a pastor with a sincere belief in the Bible, I’ve always been startled by the number of astrology books I see in bookstores. But a few days back I was given another startlement – the proliferation of Tarot card decks.

Just a few years back, when I looked, it seemed as though there were only a few kinds of Tarot decks on sale – four, five, ten at most. But the photo above, taken just last week in a local Barnes and Noble, offers me more than 100 decks, with themes like Magic Nordic, Dungeons and Dragons, Dia de Los Muertos, Celtic, The Wild Unknown Animal Spirit, the Witch Tarot Deck, a Poet’s Tarot, and many, many more.

Okay. What’s the story here? The story seems to be that Tarot has taken off with the velocity of a SpaceX rocket booster. People evidently keep asking for these oracle tools, asking with so much persistence that publishers scour around for themes (and artists who can illustrate them) to supply the need.

Searching for knowledge of the beyond, or the future, or for life guidance, is natural curiosity. But the all-knowing God – who offers us eternal wisdom in His 730,000-word Bible – warns us against dead-end forms of divination.

To read two Scriptures about this subject, click the link just below:
https://www.bibleinfo.com/en/topics/occult

Photo © 2024 by Chelsea Jurgensen
Commentary ©2024 by Russell Jurgensen
Thursday, October 31, 2024

This week after my daughter’s wedding on Sunday, I’m glad to use one of her photos. I like how the sunlight emanates to create a glow on the clouds and the plants.

It also makes me think about how God’s love emanates to impact people’s lives and reflects off them to others.

It is interesting to me how living a Christ-centered life seems hard, but how the alternative turns out truly hard. Let’s focus on God’s love and see how that can lift our burdens and improve our relationships like nothing else can.

Photo and Commentary ©2024 by Darren Milam
Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Nowadays, when you take an image and you are posting it to your favorite social media location, you need to call out if you used a filter or not. Well, in both cases, no filter was used. Clearly, I understand how a camera (even the one on my phone) works and there is an element of filtering, but I did not manipulate the color or saturation, post image taking. The contrast and color of this bright and beautiful sunflower was all due to the “God filter.” What do I mean by that? God created the deep blue sky, you can see in the background. God created the vibrant oranges and yellows found in the petals. His filter is the only filter we need.

It is images like these that remind us of how our God, not only cares for His creations, but also wants us (humans) to enjoy each of the creations.

Most of you have heard the hymn (poem before the song) “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” by Cecil Frances Alexander (feel free to read all about her life and her incredible talents). As some of you know, she had a few more hymns (several hundred), but this is one of her most-known and it starts with:

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful:
The Lord God made them all.

The song was written in 1848, but the words couldn’t be truer today. We see the varying hues, the textures, the details, all through His filter. God has created – the bright and beautiful, the great and small, the wise and wonderful, He’s created them all.