Into the Wild Blue

 
The lavender of the crocuses is gone and we’re into the blue period of the seasonal wildflower show.

These flowers are wild lupines. At least that’s what we call them here in the Yukon. Texans call their particular variety of lupines bluebonnets, which makes them sound a whole lot more intriguing, doesn’t it?

Lupines are legumes, which means they’re related to peas and beans and peanuts. Each one of those little blooms grows into a peapod-like seed packet. You don’t want to eat the seeds of these legume pods, though, because they contain a bitter poison. Thankfully, lupines make up for their toxicity with their loveliness, and before long I expect to see a solid sweep of lupine blue on each side of one of my favorite woodland walking trails down by the river.

I’ve also seen another blue wildflower recently (below). This one is called Jacob’s ladder because of their ladder-like leaves. This is a plant that can do unbroken stretches of colour, too. There are places on my regular dog-walking trail around my subdivision where entire hillsides become blue with a low carpet of blooming Jacob’s ladder.

Soon there’ll be one more blue wildflower blooming in my perennial garden; I’ll show it to you when it’s here. And after these initial blue blossoms, the summer wildflower revue moves on to the pretty pinks.

Previous wildflower post: 

• Lavender Charm 

Photos by Andrew Stark.

Update on Monday, June 2, 2008 at 8:30AM by rebecca

At Kim’s suggestion, I submitted this post to Project Blue at Anna Carson Photography.

Sunday's Hymn

The singing this morning at my church was led by the youth choir. Here’s one of the hymns we sang.

To God Be the Glory

To God be the glory, great things He has done;
So loved He the world that He gave us His Son,
Who yielded His life an atonement for sin,
And opened the life gate that all may go in.

Refrain

Praise the Lord, praise the Lord,
Let the earth hear His voice!
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord,
Let the people rejoice!
O come to the Father, through Jesus the Son,
And give Him the glory, great things He has done.

O perfect redemption, the purchase of blood,
To every believer the promise of God;
The vilest offender who truly believes,
That moment from Jesus a pardon receives.

Great things He has taught us, great things He has done,
And great our rejoicing through Jesus the Son;
But purer, and higher, and greater will be
Our wonder, our transport, when Jesus we see.

—-Fanny Crosby

When you search for “To God Be the Glory” on YouTube, you get mostly versions of this song, which by way, was sung at my wedding thirty-three years ago today.  Here’s one of the few featuring the original To God Be the Glory.

Other hymns, worship songs, etc. posted today:

• The Second Sunday after Trinity at Magic Statistics
• Not What My Hands Have Done at Hiraeth
  
• Hear What God the Lord Hath Spoken at Seasoning of the Heart
• More Love to Thee, O Christ at Whatever Things…
• Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven at Field Stone Cottage
• Lord’s Day 22, 2008 at The Thirsty Theologian
• Abide with Me at Conjubilant With Song
• What Though I Cannot Break My Chain at joythruChrist
  

Have you posted a hymn today and I missed it? Let me know by leaving a link in the comments or by emailing me at the address in the sidebar and I’ll add your post to the list.

Supremely Silly Smartypants Notions

J. I. Packer, in the introduction to In My Place Condemned He Stood, explaining why those who refer to the doctrine that Christ’s death is penal substitution as “divine child abuse,”  as some have done, are impertinent and foolish:

It was with [Christ’s] own will and with his own love mirroring the Father’s, therefore, that he took the place of human sinners exposed to divine judgment and laid down his life as a sacrifice for them, entering fully into the state and experience of death that was due to them. Then he rose from death to reign by the Father’s appointment in the kingdom of God and from his throne to send the Spirit to induce faith in himself and in the saving work he had done, to communicate forgiveness and pardon, justification and adoption to the penitent, and to unite all believers to himself to share his risen life in foretaste of the full life of heaven that is to come. Since all this was planned by the holy Three in their eternal solidarity of mutual love, and since the Father’s central purpose in it all was and is to glorify and exalt the Son as Savior and Head of a new humanity, smartypants notions like “divine child abuse” as a comment on the cross are supremely silly and as irreverent and wrong as they could possibly be.