Let me back up some. This Saturday I crawled out of bed (after sufficient amounts of sleeping in) and hiked in the fall mud at a nearby park. It was a beautiful day to get lost on the deer trails running through the underbrush. I pulled my camera out about halfway through the hike when this yellow green tree standing alone in a field caught my eye.
Now you're going to have to use your imagination here. Picture a tall aspen, with two or three trunks huddled closely together. Its tallest branches crowned in gold above a cape of brightest green. It's solitary in a tan field as the breeze blows gently through its leaves. In the distance a grove of pines, the darkest of greens, looks on - jealous of its yellow tip. Peaking over the ridge is a snow capped mountain spying on the sun-kissed aspen standing tall under a clear blue sky.
That's what I saw. What my camera saw? Something else entirely.
But by getting outside, by stomping through the clay mud I got to see that beautiful aspen. And not only that, I was able to imitate my Creator in trying to be creative. He proved (as always, praise be) to be far more creative than I am but in that moment as I saw the beauty He made, I got to worship God for being a God of beauty.
So my hike through the mud with the disappointing pictures was not in vain. It's just that the whole point of it wasn't where I was looking at all.
Which leads me to these two pictures that I do want to share. I took these two on a deer trail - it was a path that no one had braved the mud to take but when I stopped looking in all the obvious places I got the best pictures of the morning :)