Colour My World*
By Dan Woods
Dan is an active member of the Tylersville Rd. Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Mason Ohio. He is employed at the Procter & Gamble Co., where he works in research and development, performing analytical chemistry.

I heard it would be breathtaking…previous vacationers told me so. Pictures I'd seen in brochures, books and magazines said so, too. But now that I've had the opportunity to experience it for myself, I realize that words and pictures don't do it justice.

My wife and I recently were able to join my parents on an Alaskan Cruise - 7 days on land, 7 days at sea. Wow - the 'wilderness' of Alaska. I put 'wilderness' into quotations because I'm sure that seeing Alaska from planes, trains, buses and boats doesn't qualify as true wilderness. But compared to the urban sprawl I see out of my car windshield every day…it was wilderness. Despite my anticipation (no, my expectation) of experiencing some of the wild, untainted natural beauty that God has created in this world, I was still astounded and grateful.

Grateful that God would take the time to blend 10,000 shades of green and brown and white into one mountain. As I stood in awe at a stop in Denali National Forest in the middle of our northernmost state, my mind flashed back to something a church friend had related to us during Sunday School recently. She asked us to look out of the window of our classroom at the tree across the road. Then she asked us to imagine we were floating towards that tree. Closer, closer. Right up to a single branch, and then a single leaf. 'Look' at all of those veins; examine the subtle changes of green within that one small leaf. Then 'come back' to where you're sitting now and ask yourself "Why did God bother to put such fabulous details into an inanimate object, of which there are billions scattered across the earth?" It would have been so much easier for God to just splash a blob of generic green on a brown stripe and declare it 'A Tree'. But God gave us so much more…

I was filled with gratitude that God would pour out for anyone to witness a myriad of blues in the oceans and the skies that no earthbound artist could ever recreate. It's usually only on vacations that many of us stop and smell the roses…to truly relax and appreciate the beauty of God's world around us. Even then we often have to force ourselves to do it…so many souvenir shops to conquer. As I stood at a railing on the deck of our ship one cool afternoon, scanning the ocean for those elusive humpback whales that were supposed to inhabit the particular passage we were sailing through, I found myself mesmerized by the ever-changing colors that flowed on the ocean surface. "THAT'S the perfect shade of blue for me…no, THAT is. No THAT is." Always-changing, dramatic, beautiful.

A few days after our return to reality, I got back the 260+ photographs I'd taken. Although I have a pretty decent camera, I was disappointed with the results. You had to be there. I pray that my memories I gathered from the trip burn the colors into my mind permanently. My camera let me down.

Thank you, God, for the experience. I take this moment to express my gratitude for the fantastic world You've created for us, the stunning colors with which You have filled it.

Thank you, for colouring my world.

* Credit to one of my favorite 70's band - Chicago - for the article's title…

<<Back to Archive

View for Printing

Contributors
Staff
Advertising
Internships

Send this Page to a Friend

Add Me to Mailing List