Hey. Come and visit my greeting card site and buy some really cool cards. Cheers Kel

Click here to see our photo’s from our four day holiday in Summit Lake, Wisconsin.

Btw for those of you who care I was trying out a new watermark on these photo’s. It still needs a lot of work on it, however I know where I am heading now.

Cheers

Hello. Just want to share with you my holiday snaps. If you want to read through the 79 click here and then keep pushing next at the bottom of each photo. there is captions underneath the photo’s. Or if you would prefer to browse the overview then click here. Please do leave some comments and give me some feed back. Cheers.

Like a crocus on a grave, is the flower of my suffering.
Forever stretching upward whilst leaving my sin, my deathly nature behind.
Only to discover that my humanness is strong and another winter is on the horizon.
Where my earthy nature rises up and once again stamps out the blossom of my godliness.
But forgiveness is powerful and mercy rains down on the cemetery of my soul.
And once again the crocus blooms, mirroring the purity of its creator.
And I am taken along on the journey, each time a little wiser and hopefully a little more like my creator.
Like a crocus on a grave, is the flower of my life.
Reaching out to embrace all that God shines down.
And waiting for the day when I will return to him.
Like a crocus on a grave.

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This little cutie I found in a cemetery somewhere between Riga and Liepaja. I presume it is a crocus. It speaks to me both of purity and of new life that comes from death. And oddly the two are very closely related.

As we travel on our never ending journey of trying to leave our junk and nasty character traits behind we come across a biblical phrase or concept of dying to ourselves. This literally means submitting our lives to Christ and continually allowing him to take away our sin, of course a certain about of giving is required on our side. But through this death of our oldself new life appears like a crocus on a grave.

And where does the the “purity part” come into it. Well that is the direction that we are heading in. The ever illusive and never obtainable goal of purity. But as we submit our sin and junk the best way we know how to Christ, we take another step forward on the never ending road to purity.

I have no idea what this flower is, but it is beautiful. Sitting on the shores of the Adriatic sea is the spectacular Croatian walled city of Dubrovnik. During the past summer, bush fires spread across parts of Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina, their scars can be seen streaking across the hillside.

This rather dry and crusted flower is actually a weed growing out of a brick wall at the top of a old military fort. The flower alone doesn’t hold much beauty, but in its context it is quite simply startling.

It rather reminds me of the many Christian aid or humanitarian workers scattered around the world’s back alleys. Many of them are nothing special in their natural context, but when placed in a landscape of human suffering and need, suddenly the weed becomes a beautiful flower showering the world’s poor with the beauty and delight of our God who so vehemently loves to comfort the poor.

I want to start sharing with you some of my photo’s. It is my plan until I get sick of it to grace you regularly with some of my flowers.

I found this flower, if you can call it a flower,  on a hill behind the Adriatic village of Vinišce in Croatia. I took a photo of it because it was unique, complicated and intricate.

This was near the sun(less) dial, I don’t mind telling you it was pure dead Baltic up there. Lots of wind chill and snow blowing right in your face.

This is the entry into the Hill of the witches. It was mostly to dark too take photo’s in here, but it was a nice walk.

And here we are waiting for winter, this photo was taken by another couple of Kiwi’s who happen to enjoy owning the same camera.

BTW I trialled the new to me word Press, ImageShack uploader, excellent and simple thanks Karolis. But hey, there is still another plug-in on the VK blog that I must get 🙂

I found this hanging off a stick cross on the sand hills of Nida.

This photo was taken at the Hill of the Witches in Juodkrantė.

This is a favourite, I spotted these little flowers growing through fallen leaves in the Hill of the Witches car park.

If you want to see more just follow the links. We started our Croatian holiday in Dubrovnik. Then we stayed in a little village called Vinisce and visited lots of surrounding places. And finished our holiday in a village called Slunj and from there visited the Plitvice Lakes National Park.

Please do enjoy the photo’s, leave comments and later I will add captions. Cheers 🙂

Well a week or so later Sharon with a little help from me has added captions to the photo’s.