Last weekend I walked with my daughter by the Brazos River and took some photographs that reflect events in the first three days of the Creation.
“And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.”
We walked on a sand bar that is in rainy seasons the riverbed. When the river gathers together unto one place and the bar appears, it is a mottled firmament of mud and sand.
“And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called the Seas: and God saw that it was good.”
God saw that it was good because he was building a home for terrestrial creatures and not fish. We are those terrestrial creatures and we live on the lower firmament, under the upper firmament, and in the fluid element of air. We sometimes descend into the other fluid element, water, and the other fluid element sometimes descends onto us.
“And God said, Let the earth bring forth vegetation.”
The last word is sometimes translated as vegetation, sometimes as grass. It may be best understood as greening of the earth, just as grass greens the hillsides in a desert land. This was God’s second creative act because life did not evolve from the lower firmament of earth, but rather came from outside as an altogether new fifth element.
The greening in the photo is a fine moss that, under special conditions, appears on a sandstone boulder that has fallen from a bluff on the river side. In one sense the boulder brings forth the fine moss, which is dormant and invisible when the conditions are not met. But in another and deeper sense, the boulder cannot green until it is ordered to green by an outside command.
The Orthosphere 
Wonderful photos; but the first is inspired. Congratulations.
Thanks.
Very good, sir. Your post put me in mind of Matthew Fontaine Maury’s keynote address given at the laying of the cornerstone of the University of the South, now known as Kewanee University, in east Tennessee, Bishop Otey presiding. Here is a short but relevant excerpt from the speech:
*Sewanee, not Kewanee. Whoops!
That’s a good quote. The spring semester begins tomorrow and I’m once again teaching a course on the history of geography. I’ll try to fit this in somewhere.
Excellent, sir. Commander Maury’s speech in question contains a number of such statements. Here is a longer excerpt I plucked from it a couple of minutes ago:
“…and it was good.” This is the presupposition — God’s conclusion — that enervates all productive human endeavor.