March 30, 2007
The Beauty of Tulips
Until just over five years ago I had spent my whole life living and working in cities or large towns. Liverpool, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Manchester, and then Port Talbot.
Since moving to pastor Wheelock Heath Baptist Church, I have lived in a small Cheshire village about 3 miles from where we now meet as a congregation on Sunday mornings. Instead of concrete there are fields, and instead of grey, I am surrounded by green. I am now woken by rural sounds rather than road sounds; the coo of wood pigeons rather than the rumble of traffic. If I walk home from my study at church after midnight, I am almost as likely to meet a wandering badger or a lone fox as I am to pass a fellow human being.
I am learning to appreciate God’s creation first hand rather than through the window of television or the lens of a magazine photographer.
The lane on which I live has at least one skilled gardener and every day for the last week, I have been forced to pause in front of his house to admire the tulips that grow there. They are vivid splashes that never fail to draw my attention, so today I stopped to photograph them.
I am reminded again that we live in a world of great beauty painted not just in dull shades, not in pastels only, but in bright, bold explosions of colour. They speak of the majesty of God, the loveliness of the created order, and of the importance of appreciating the variegated landscape that surrounds us. Tulips testify to the glory of their Creator; they trumpet his praise with precision and clarity. We, at times, ought simply to stop and give thanks both for the things made and for the Maker himself. O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder When through the woods and forest glades I wander, Then sings my soul, my Saviour God; to thee,
consider all the works thy hand hath made,
I see the stars, I hear the mighty thunder,
thy power throughout the universe displayed:
and hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees;
when I look down from lofty mountain grandeur,
and hear the brook, and feel the gentle breeze
How great thou art, how great thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God; to thee,
How great thou art, how great thou art!