25 March 2007

The Heavens Declare

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of His hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.

Psalm 19:1-3

I've written much of the rain lately. Washington state is famous for it, but even natives have their limits. Days upon days of pounding rain always make me think of Noah and the flood. It hadn't quite been 40 days and nights yet, but it the number of consecutive days was rapidly climbing.

My sister Kaari and I left for church this past Saturday night under a deluge. Toward the end ofthe service during the closing prayer, we could hear it hammer the converted warehouse roof with particularly impressive force. After the final song was finished, we made our toward the foyer and out the front doors. The first things we saw were a startling shaft of sunlight and a rainbow. I had difficulty capturing it with my camera, but from our vantage point in the parking lot, you could see the full arc of it.


The whole sky was magnificent, like nothing either of us had ever seen. The clouds were brilliantly illuminated yellow and orange. The sky held for us shades of blue we had never seen. We immediately made our way to the waterfront. I would post all 33 pictures if I could, but not even they would come close to doing God's handiwork justice.

After snapping several pictures of the evening sky, the light began to ebb quickly. We returned to the car and listened to Chris Tomlin's version of "Amazing Grace", cranked loudly with the windows down. I can't imagine a better soundtrack for such a sky.

12 comments:

  1. These photos beautifully illustrate this verse—often I whisper it in the darkness and have held it dear for many a year (this translation as well)

    Your honesty in "nothing to say" is refreshing. So much in our hearts happens when we are still.

    Appreciate the note regarding your body art that you left on my blog and will be looking forward to the spititual meaning in your re-write.

    Being new to the blogging world, I am surprised at the depth and connection that goes on and thankful to hear what God is doing in the hearts of His people.

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  2. beautiful, kirsten! i've never been able to capture a rainbow on film...i can just imagine the lovely treat that was when you stepped outside and saw it.

    and i love that verse- it reminds of the one, also, that says everyone has an innate knowledge of God. how could we look at the heavens and nature and not? it seems every culture and people group believes there was some Creator as their folklore and history suggests. it was fascinating to hear all their different Creation stories when i studied Ancient Literature in college. it's my prayer they will come to know the TRUE Creator. the heavens do truly declare Him!

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  3. GORGEOUS! Thanks for posting these.

    I think I logged on here yesterday before you had posted the narrative. (Is that true? Did you post pics without narrative first?) Love the story. I could totally hear the rain pulsating on the warehouse roof and see you and Kaari in the car, singing loudly to the Amazing Grace tune.

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  4. such good pictures - God truly does use nature to reveal his majestic nature - I love reading the Psalms and Isaiah during those times, and relecting on how great he truly is.

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  5. Thanks for visiting, friends! Nights like these are why I've started taking my camera with me almost everywhere.

    C - to answer your question, I did originally post these sans narrative. Long story short: my sis & I were in Seattle last night & I was madly trying to get it all posted at the hotel before we went to a concert. Blogger became possessed and was reformatting/reconfiguring my text in the most annoying ways and would NOT be corrected (anyone else experience this when posting?). Argh! So I left the pictures posted, we went to the concert, and I was finally able to add the narrative this morning (not that Blogger was much nicer to me; I just had more time). :o)

    I would have been happy to leave them as is (God really can speak for Himself where His creation is concerned), but I really wanted to provide a context for the pics.

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  6. soundtrack for the sky... I liked that thought. Now I'm going out to see the sky here, and listen to the soundtrack that is simply the birds fluttering, dipping and chirping.

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  7. Hey Kirsten, I totally get what you said about Blogger! I don't post pictures often because it gives me so much grief. I do think that since Blogger got bought by Google, though, there's more storage space for photos. (I think the limit was 50KB before, but now it's 8MB?) I still can't figure out how you and Christin are able to post as many pictures as you do on your blog. Somehow, I can't get many more than 4 or 5 on my site. Ah, well.

    By the way, what concert did you go to? :)

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  8. Christianne, have you thought about using flickr.com to host your photos? That might work better for you.

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  9. Kirstin, thanks so much for posting those pictures. I love beautiful pictures of the sky. . . nothing competes with God's creativity! It is amazing to me that He outdoes himself day after day after day.

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  10. Laura, thanks for the heads-up. Not sure I'm smart enough to use flickr. Is it similar to picasa?

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  11. Rebecca - I couldn't agree with you more! I challenge any painter to come up with a display as beautiful & as vast as that one! It simply couldn't be done.

    C & L - I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one with issues when posting photos. My "perfect" (ha!) post was paid for with much frustration & many tears, but at least it's done now. It seems that with more than one photo, you're bound to run into trouble. I tried Picasa & it was smarter than me. :o) Sometimes I will upload from my hard drive, but mainly I've been using my Snapfish account to post photos.

    My sister & my friend Elyse & I saw Mat Kearney in concert on Sunday night. It was a fantastic show in a fairly small venue (my favorite way to see artists perform). He's a mainstream artist, but if you pay the slightest attention to the lyrics, the grace of God drips from every word (and he's not so shy about saying so). It was a fantastic evening!

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  12. Beautiful shots and I love the music you are listening to right now! I am here from bluemountainmama's visiting.

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