His Good Purpose

It's for His good purpose that eagles are raised up.

Only days after I took this photograph a strong wind flew across North Idaho, an uncommonly strong wind. A thunder cloud nearly as big as Rhode Island pushed its way across the Panhandle and left dead trees and destruction from south of Coeur d'Alene to the Canadian border. Average wind speed was over 50 mph with gusts up to 70 and possibly more in places.

And it was sudden.

It came across the landscape like a freight train. Below is a picture taken from my front porch only a minute or so after the first powerful breath hit us.

Sadly, this eagle's nest was destroyed. The adults survived, but as near as we could tell, the chicks did not.

It's like that in life, I think, in human life. Who chooses who dies and who lives at any given time? Death always seems unreasonable, unfair. But is it? Who are we to say? God is the creator.

Do you believe in Satan, the God of this World, according to the bible? I do. God, the Creator Most High, gave him certain leeway and lattitude here for whatever reasons divine or otherwise. He is the ruler of death. But Jesus Christ, the lamb of God, overcame the power of Satan. If you've been touched by Him (the Christ) then you know what I mean. If not, then you probably don't care and have clicked on.

The two eagle chicks in the right of the nest above weren't the only birds killed that day. Look at the wind in the second picture! But many survived as well. It's for His good purpose that eagles are raised up. Are you an eagle in spirit? Do you have the drive and the fortitude to face life as an eagle faces life? with eyes that see far and wings adept?

I am. I hope to God I am and I wish to soar with what He's given me.

### Dwayne K. Parsons

The Flower of Insight

Do you think of grasses as bearing flowers? They do. All grasses flower if not cut and a wide variety of grasses exist in the plant realm. Many people see grass as the short, mowed green stuff in their yard. They never see it full grown on the stem flowering out into full blossom dropping pollen, and if they do see it, they don't really notice it.

This orchard grass stem was imaged one afternoon while I fished along the shoreline of the lower Clark Fork River on the banks of Derr Island, where my wife and I had gone to enjoy an afternoon barbeque with Jerry & Gale Sherman and others. Satisfied with meal and friends I dropped down to the river to try my luck. I caught more photographs than fish. This one stood out as one of my favorites of the day.

It reminds me of the way insight comes. Insight, like this grass-top flower fully laden with fertile pollen, blossoms out on the stem of perceptive thought. You look at something, watch it, analyze it and think about it for a time, forgetting about the flow of life around you and then as the thought ripens, it suddenly blooms into insight. "Aha!" you say. You've caught hold of something you didn't realize before.

I love moments like that, just like I love this flower shot of river grass in bloom. Think about it. Flowers and thoughts bloom in the same way. Both grow out of a soil of sorts nurtured in one way or another until they bud into pregnancy. Then suddenly, with predestined magic, they blossom to release their fertility on yet more flowers or thought.

###Dwayne K. Parsons