The Most Beautiful Country in the World, says he modestly......

On Saturday I travelled from Glasgow to Fort William. I was sharing in the opening of the newly completed extension of the Baptist Church there. It was a terrific afternoon with a packed church, heartfelt singing, and a sense of achievement mixed with gratitude and genuine surprise at the goodness of God.

One of the spectacular bonuses for me was the drive up, through some of the most beautiful landscapes of one of the most beautiful countries in the world. I stopped at least half a dozen times and if I hadn't had a time and destination beckoning I might have spent the day just looking. So I took some photos, and was frustrated by the limitations of the camera. I don't just mean my camera - I mean any camera.

Once or twice I did a 360 degree scanning of the countryside and just wondered, and gazed, and felt that strange ache of sadness that we know isn't so much unhappiness as the authentic sense of our own finitude, discovering yet again the limits of our capacity to behold and see, and yet for all our incompleteness sadness laced with the sheer ecstasy - by which I mean the outgoingness of our inner life of thought and feeling - the sense that we are looking at the work of the hands of God, and the knowledge that the overlap distance sadness and joy disappears at such moments.

This was Loch Lomond at about 11.00, and I could have sat there for ages.

I stopped here and took some photos for young German visitors and took this one for myself. Psalm 121, "I to the hills will lift mine eyes, from whence doth come mine aid?

And this is the Loch as mirror, one of the most serene moments of reflection - both on the water surface, and as I sat and was amazed.

Comments

[Poetreehugger.blogspot.com]

I enjoyed this. I can relate to the experience of wonder and just gazing, and the time of reflection called forth by the beauty. I was surprised, too, since I had a similar experience the same day you posted this, only instead of mountains and pools I was served the snow, trees, and sunlight through late dried leaves of my part of the world. I love the photos, and agree that they cannot do justice to what our eyes can behold.