God as Master Artist

In my devotional today Charles Spurgeon talks about God's creation.

He says here:

"I must confess that I think it a most right and excellent thing that you and I should rejoice in the natural creation of God."
 

A photo I took of the sand dunes in Oregon

   
"One of the purest and most innocent of joys, apart from spiritual things, in which a man can indulge is a joy in the works of God."

From our last vacation in Washington State

       
"I like to see my Savior on the hills and by the shores of the sea. I hear my Father's voice in the thunder and listen to the whispers of his love in the cadence of the sunlit waves. These are my Father's works, and therefore I admire them. I seem all the nearer to him when I am among them." 

A photo I took from the sea lion caves in California I can still hear the waves and the sea lions!

 He goes on to tell this story to explain the importance of not just loving God but all that he has created:

"If I were a great artist, I should think it a very small compliment if my son came into my house and said he would not notice the pictures I had painted because he only wanted to think of me. In doing so he would condemn my paintings, for if they were good for anything, he would rejoice to see my hand in them. Oh, but surely everything that comes from the hand of such a master artist as God has something of himself in it! The Lord rejoices in his works, shouldn't his people do so?"

Peonies from my garden

 He concludes with this:

"There are lovely spots on this fair globe which ought to make even a blasphemer devout. I have said, among the mountains, 'He who sees no God here is mad.' There are things that God has made which overwhelm with a sense of his omnipotence: how can men see them and doubt the existence of the Deity? Whether you consider the anatomy of the body or the arrangement of the mighty heavens, you wonder that the scorner does not bow his head - at least in silence - and own up to the infinite supremacy of God." 

A picture I took on a family vacation when we drove through the rocky mountains. I can't explain in words the majestic cathedrals these mountain are. The lake was also incredibly beautiful. No photography captures their beauty and awe.

                           Psalm 8:3-9 

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!"