Saturday, March 7, 2009

Every grain of sand

Nikon D70s, f6.3, 1/160 sec, ISO 200, 27mm equivalent (click to enlarge)

"Sandpipers"
Nikon D70s, f9, 1/320 sec, ISO 200, 105mm equivalent (click to enlarge)


Sedimentary my dear Watson! Approaching the above cliff towards the end of a beach walk brought back happy memories of Geography field-trips at school. I find it absolutely fascinating to think how cliffs like these were formed. Look at all the different undulating layers, they've been twisted and turned over with unimaginable force and power. The rolling rippled rocks in the foreground look like a fossilised beach. Petrified sand - one day it's a beach then somehow in someway it gets turned into stone! I don't even begin to know or understand half of what has gone on here (my A-level Geography career ended nearly twenty years ago now ;-) Of course things such as this fill me with awe and draw me closer to God. It is almost sacramental, a masterpiece of the Creator's hand almost magnetically drawing the observer who will see into a state of humility and even worship.

As I pick up a handful of sand and let the tiny grains roll over my fingers, I consider the mind-bending truth that there are more stars in the Universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches on this tiny little blue planet of ours...

Reminds me of a verse from Romans:
But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can't see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. (Romans 1:20 Message)
And also Bob Dylan's "Every Grain of Sand"
In the fury of the moment
I can see the Master's hand
In every leaf that trembles,
in every grain of sand.
Oh and for those who don't get excited by a bunch of crumbling rocks, the second picture of some Sandpipers might do it for you!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Whats the blue stuff? It seems like a verrrry long time since I saw sky that colour.

I love rocks and as a child my ideal day at the seaside was scrambling over them.

Daniel & Sonja said...

Weird isn't it, that is a genuinely blue sky, no computer trickery involved! Our two boys were having a ball running among the rocks and peering into rock pools - they slept well that night.

Joc Sanders said...

I once visited Sully Island in South Wales, where I saw what the geology textbooks call a 'naked discontinuity'. A liassic sea had eroded a much older rock outcrop and made a pebbly beach, which itself had been buried by later rocks and turned to stone - a pudding stone. I saw the modern sea eroding a fossil liassic beach and building up on it yet another beach, which if the climate change prophets are correct may itself be flooded by rising sea levels and buried under new sedimentary layers.

Thus God cntinues to create and recreate His planet!

Daniel & Sonja said...

Joc that sounds like a fascinating place to visit - I shall have to look it up next time I get to Wales.