My Desktop Photo 12: Swimming Beaver

Photo by Andrew Stark
(click for larger view)

The dog and I watched one of these not-so-little guys up close and personal on our evening walk a few days ago. He (or she) was half in the river and half on the bank, nibbling on an aspen branch.  The dog and I sat from a few feet away, watching for several minutes, until the dog could stand it no more and let out one little woof. The beaver thought for a minute and then dove under and swam off.

Book Review: In My Place Condemned He Stood

Celebrating the Glory of the Atonement by J. I. Packer and Mark Dever.

The publication of this book resulted from the collective reasoning of Ligon Duncan, Al Mohler, Mark Dever and C.J. Mahaney,  who all agreed that it would be useful to have three classic essays on the atonement by J.I. Packer included in one book. These three pieces—The Heart of the Gospel, a chapter from the classic book Knowing God; What Did the Cross Achieve?: The Logic of Penal Substitution, originally a Tyndale Biblical Theology Lecture; and Saved by His Precious Blood,  the well-known introduction to John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ—along with Mark Dever’s article, Nothing but the Blood, first published in Christianity Today, make up the heart of In My Place Condemned He Stood.

Since this book is a collection of essays, I’ve decided to go through it chapter by chapter, giving a short summary of each and, when I think it’d be useful, my evaluation of it.

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Stopping on Yellow

I spied a few arnicas in bloom on last night’s dog walk, so it’s time to repost another of the wildflower posts.

 

These are two of the yellow coloured wildflowers you might see if you visited the Yukon. On the left is a little arnica flower. As you can probably tell from the photo, arnica is closely related to sunflowers and asters. Yes, this is yet another member of the largest family of flowering plants, the composites. This particular variety of arnica grows throughout the western mountains of North America from the Yukon down through northern Mexico.

From a web search for information on this wildflower, it’s easy to see that it is best known for its use in herbal medicine. It is one of those “external use only” plants, rubbed on the skin in hopes of soothing all manner of owies—scrapes, bruises, sprains, muscle pain, chapped lips, irritated nostrils, acne, burns, sores, and eczema. What’s more, applied to the scalp, arnica makes hair grow, so look out, Rogaine! It has the potential, however, to be a cure that is worse than the disease. With a warning lable that says, “May produce severe inflammation,” you may want to think twice before using it, especially for your irritated nostrils.

On the right is another yellow wildflower. I know it doesn’t look yellow in the photo, but those pods in the photo were flowers just a little while ago. They looked like this, and that’s why it’s called the yellow dryas. I don’t know what you think, but I like them better as a little hairy fruit than in yellow flower form.

It’s when they’re dressed in their light lavender silky threads and golden crowns that the name dryas seems most appropriate. Dryas, as you know if you’re up on Greek mythology, was the son of King Lycurgus. A right royal myth prince was he. Unfortunately for prince Dryas, one day his father went a tad loony and mistook his own royal offspring for a patch of ivy and killed him. It’s in this young prince’s memory that someone named these little whippersnappers dryas. I suppose that’s because it would be next to impossible to mistake them for ivy unless you were loony.

 

 Previous wildflower posts: 

• Lavender Charm
• Into the Wild Blue
• The Blue Belles