In my weekly Works & Wonders column, I combine a brief devotional with other interesting and uplifting bits and pieces I gleaned throughout the week. I hope you enjoy this week’s collection! It includes:
- As Beautiful as Creation
- Audubon Photography Awards
- Blackwing Pencils
- The World’s Narrowest Islands
- Stowaway
- Greenland’s Vanished Vikings
1.
As Beautiful as Creation
Each of us is prone at times to lose our confidence in God’s wisdom and to assume that he would benefit from a bit of our own. How often do we grumble and complain against God’s will? How often in prayer do we attempt to direct God according to our own limited knowledge, our own limited wisdom? Yet God’s creation has a way of redirecting our thoughts, for it displays the greatness of his wisdom. God created it without the least bit of input from any man, yet he made it good—and very good. And if God exercised his wisdom in creating so wonderful a universe, shouldn’t we trust him to exercise his wisdom in the affairs and circumstances of our lives? Will we trust him with creation but not providence, and trust him to create but not to direct? To ask the question is to highlight its absurdity. Faith directs us to believe that God’s providence is every bit as beautiful as creation—as beautiful as the mighty mountains, as awesome as the expanse of the oceans, as stunning as the most wondrous of all the creatures that live on the earth. (You’ll see some of the wonders of God’s creation as you scroll down!)
2.
Audubon Photography Awards
This week Audubon revealed the winners of its 2026 Audubon Photography Awards. The results, as you may expect, are nothing short of stunning. I’m kind of partial to the photo of the Crested Caracaras, largely because I would love to visit Patagonia where the photo was taken, but you can’t go wrong with any of them.
3.
Blackwing Pencils
I’m not a pencil-user on the whole, so I don’t have much experience with Blackwing pencils. Yet from what I’ve heard, they are pretty special. I enjoyed this short film on How Blackwing Pencils Are Made. I may just have to try them out!
4.
The World’s Narrowest Islands
I think this is pretty neat: a Dutch community where people live on tiny strips of land in a lake. “In much of the world, owning a lakeside home is desirable. But in the Dutch town of Loosdrecht, residents live within the lake itself, with houses on their own impossibly skinny islands.”
It all goes back to the days of peat mining, where peat would be dug out of what was once swampland. The peat needed somewhere to dry, which explains the narrow strips of land. It kind of reminds me of the Thousand Islands area in the St. Lawrence River where you’ll find a cottage on just about every rock and piece of land.
You can view a photo gallery or watch a video: The World’s Narrowest Islands.
5.
Stowaway
You probably don’t need to be an aviation geek to be interested in the new app Stowaway (though I suppose it may help). What is it? Stowaway allows you to identify any plane and hitch a ride, virtually at least. It uses map imagery to show you what you would see if you were looking out a window on that aircraft. It’s a neat idea. Visit stowaway.live to try it out.
6.
Greenland’s Vanished Vikings
For around five centuries, the Norse lived in Greenland (a place I’ve never visited, but would dearly like to!). But then they suddenly disappeared, and archaeologists have been trying ever since to figure out why they left and where they went. This brief video from the BBC tries to understand the mystery.
I hope you enjoyed this collection. If you did, please consider sharing it with someone else who may be interested in it.
