Psalm 19:1-2 says "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge." These precious, God-breathed words weighed heavily on my mind this past week during a trip my family and I took to Michigan. We took what was essentially a beach vacation for my birthday and the 4th of July, where we spent five days in the town of Grand Haven, Michigan.

I had heard that Michigan was a beautiful and picturesque state filled with all sorts of natural wonders, and I have to say it didn't disappoint. We were in the state just ten minutes and I could already tell that we had entered a whole new world, so to speak, and had left Indiana. Now, none of this is to downplay the very real and notable natural beauty of Indiana, as I grew up and live in Indiana and enjoy it for the most part. I suppose it's just familiar to me and I have wanderlust without a doubt. My aim here is just to give brief comment to the beautiful piece of artwork that the Lord has been kind to paint that is the state of Michigan.

From a very early age, I had developed a passion for nature and basking in its rays for prolonged periods of time. As far back as I can remember, I've deeply enjoyed hunting, fishing, camping, and hiking. But by far my favorite of the four is hiking. I love to hike, in one sense, because there's almost no tension in it apart from when a hill is hard to climb, perhaps, or that off chance you get lost. When you hunt you have to be quiet and be sure all your movements are careful and when you camp, you have to take large chunks of time to set things up and what not, but one of the great things about hiking is you just get to walk, at no fixed speed and to no fixed destination, and delight in the things that God has crafted, the taste buds of your heart, so to speak, tasting all the sweetness of creation.

In Michigan, there was what appeared to be a wide variety of flowers and trees of various kinds, many of them pines, that decorated the town we were in and dotted the sides of the highways and roads. As weird as it may sound for a relatively staunch conservative such as myself to say, I've always been fascinated by trees. They are some of the most basic things to us because we see them everyday time and time again, yet it is just about impossible to plumb the depths of all that is going on in and with a simple oak tree; all the cellular activity and the root systems and the process of photosynthesis...it is breathtaking to consider it. If I cannot even fully grasp a tree, how can I fully grasp the artist that designed and intelligently brought about the trees and everything else around me? This thought sprouted up during my stay in Michigan.

As the trip was essentially a beach vacation, my family and I spent a great deal of time on the beach, soaking up the sun, enjoying the relaxation, and taking in the sights. Perhaps the latter is what I benefited from the most, though I've come to love the beach and simply laying out on it and taking in the experience of merely being there. The whole time on the beach I couldn't get enough of the soft sand, the great big blue sky, the sights of great flocks of seagulls, and the miles of water directly before my eyes, as far as they could see.

As the Hillsong lyrics proclaim, "if creation sings Your praises so will I." The first night of our trip, we went to the beach to see the sunset and I cannot commend that enough; it was the greatest sunset I think I've seen thus far. As I think back on all of this, I am speechless at the tiny snippet of God's creative genius and power that I was privy to during the vacation and I am very saddened by the number of unbelieving scientists and philosophers, men and women that for a living study and think often on a variety of matters oftentimes including the natural world. How can a person be so brilliant and so well-read and still be so recalcitrant to prefer irrationalities and improbabilities over against the good and wise God who made them and call it "science."

The unbelief is heartbreaking to me, as I've tried to think from their perspective and weigh their points against the evidence and simply cannot intellectually agree with them, regardless of how otherwise intelligent they are. This line of thinking that concerns what apologists, philosophers, and theologians call the Teleological Argument for the existence of God was on my mind a great deal in Michigan.

Well, as I said earlier, I am a man aching to travel and experience the world. I have oft dreamed of going to Israel, where my Lord lived and ministered, going to Greece and Rome, places with so much rich intellectual and literary history, and traveling around my own country, a place I am largely glad to call my earthly home. Thus far I've been to 12 states out of 50, just about a quarter of them, and unfortunately never to another country, but seeing the sights has fed into my desire to travel and see the glory of God in what else He has made. So far my favorites have been the beautiful beaches and warm, welcoming vibes in Alabama, the awesomeness of everything I experienced in Texas, and the gorgeous, memorable scenery in Michigan.

Traveling, though it's a somewhat new thing in my life, has shown me that the hype so many people have about it is definitely warranted. Though according to Scripture, the world is fallen and splintered by sin and is subject to futility, something I do believe with all of my heart, I am confident that there isn't a centimeter on this planet where the glory of God is totally absent. God is too zealous for His glory to permit His artfully crafted, intelligently designed world to utterly fall apart and become a place devoid of beauty and wholesomeness. As the early Christian theologian, and one of my favorites, St. Augustine said "All things proclaim Him, all things speak. Their beauty is the voice by which they announce God, by which they sing 'it is you who made me beautiful, not me myself but you.'"

So, my concluding exhortation is for all readers to travel if at all possible. Don't become obsessed with it and become impoverished through foolish spending, I would never encourage that, but if the opportunity presents itself, definitely jump on it. It is well worth the gas money and the time spent packing, unpacking, and driving. It may not be for everyone, but I cannot commend it enough to those that have the ability. God shows His glory through what He has made and there is a lot that's been made to ultimately point back to Him that is out there, as it were, ready to be discovered and enjoyed. That's something I think I learned in Michigan.