OH MY GOD!!! (Or, OMG for you texty/tweety types)

Well today was a good day! I started off in a great mood, turned sour right around 3pm, and brought it back up to finish out this Hump Day in a less-than-giddy-but-still-mildly-overjoyed state.
Those of you that know me, and/or follow this blog, know that I--your ol' pal Shoehead--is a Christian. But I'm not a judgmental, fundamental, halfway-mental Ned Flanders type. In fact, I'm not very religious at all. I believe in God as creator, and Jesus as savior. I'm not hung up on the religiosity of the whole thing. My faith can best be illustrated and explained in the amazing book, The Shack. This is a brilliantly written novel (or is it true???) that perfectly captures the relational nature of God. If God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are like they're portrayed in this book, I'm all in! I try to center my faith on two things, as not to over-complicate the whole matter.  One, Jesus said to "Love one another" (John 13:34). I do my best to help people, feed the hungry, take interest in people, and just hang out and enjoy people. The second is to appreciate what God has given us, which leads me to the whole point of today's blog. Within the last few days, my Facebooking has led me to run across "The Milky Way Scientists". This seems to be part of a NASA outreach, I'm guessing from their url. But they show some of the most beautiful and wondrous photographs of nature and man's handiwork I've ever seen. Picture after picture inspires awe and astonishment. Even the photographic quality is simply amazing! Here's one of the Milky Way, shot from a North Sea island:

And here's on beautiful shot of a high walkway across a cliff in China:

Another shot from China, this is a red seaweed that covers a beach:

Elephants in Africa against an approaching storm:

So, I'm using these amazing pictures to just honor my God, and share with everyone the beauty of creation. And an amen to that!