God's Grandeur

So it's been a while since I've posted, and I'm going to cheat and put up a picture.  Jeff has made it the wallpaper on nearly every computing device I've seen him use (yep, even his Blackberry).  We have it framed and hanging in our hallway.  And I never get tired of seeing it. 

I snapped this picture at the Four Seasons Resort in Maui in 2007.  Just look at the light.  As fabulous as they were with capturing light, even the great Impressionist painters couldn't capture light this great.  This is God's work, in all its glory. 

Isn't it beyond description?

And in case you're still reading, I just have to marvel at the majesty of God's work in this beautiful masterpiece.  And because I'm not writing much myself, I thought I'd share a wonderful poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) that I've loved since my undergraduate days, that I feel helps to better explain what we see in this picture.  Enjoy!


God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; 
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.