All nature speaks...

[Lisa writes]

Well it's Saturday - the 15th day of spring, 26 degrees is the weather, clear and sunny. And what am I doing? Working on a presentation for next Saturday's School of Education postgrad conference. The others have gone fishing. Sigh... why do I do this to myself?

Been at it for a couple of hours now, time to take a break. I realise that we haven't posted many pictures of the place, and some of you might be wondering what we see over here. Last Saturday we went with our godparents and friends over to Stradbroke Island, so above is a snapshot of what it looks like. Beautiful! (By the way, this picture was taken with the Nokia N73.)

I remember when we were doing a Bible study on 'How to hear the voice of God' by Joyce Meyer with our small group in Singapore (hello Salmon Run!), one of the ways to hear God that we learned about, was while being in nature settings. I think that describes me... when I see the natural beauty of nature, I can't help but pray in my heart to say, "Wow God, that's lovely. You're awesome!" On my weekly morning trips to the university campus at Ipswich (a 40-minute train ride from where we stay), I've had the opportunity to see some wild wallabies and kangaroos lounging around in the grassy areas (unfortunately I also saw one dead kangaroo near the tracks), and I can't help but think our God is such a creative God. I mean, who else would have thought of designing such interesting creatures?

I think I'll always remember this year's Hillsong conference in Sydney, the session by Louie Giglio when he shared about the M51 galaxy, otherwise known as the whirlpool galaxy (it's the first picture in our blog). He shared about how all nature speaks of the glory of God, even up to the heavens. That's written in the book of Psalms. And we never thought further into this even though we've come across the verse before, until Louie pointed us to the picture of the M51 galaxy. What do you see? Without a doubt, it is the image of Jesus on the Cross (this has also been called the cross galaxy). We don't know much about space and the galaxies, but we know enough, from astrologers and other scientists, that these are very very old, and earth is just one tiny little ball in one of the many galaxies out there. Way back in time, God already knew what He would do, that He would send His Son to this little ball located in the far reaches of space, and live among the humans there. And He imprinted this in the M51 galaxy. Take a look for yourself! "All heaven declares..." Praise God.

If you want to hear a little bit more about our indescribable God and the message by Louie Giglio that night, you'll find it on Youtube (what isn't, really?!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV1ZpSMHIQw Click and be blessed! :)