Wednesday, June 5, 2024

Safe Passage ...

“My home is in Heaven. I’m just traveling through this world.”

   ~ Billy Graham

   ~ 1918-2018

 ~ American evangelist, prominent evangelical Christian figure, and ordained Southern Baptist minister who became well-known internationally in the late 1940s. One of his biographers has placed him “among the most influential Christian leaders” of the 20th century.

I spotted this “Jesus 2024” sign in front of Friedens United Church of Christ, Slatington, Pennsylvania and had to stop to photograph this uplifting sight as a car sped by on Route 873 on a late May evening in this election year.

In these tumultuous times especially, it is a reminder that when all else is failing, Jesus is still there for us, and a powerful reminder of the hope that Jesus brings as we travel through this world.


 

Thursday, May 30, 2024

Mirrored ...

“Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.”

               ~ Rabindranath Tagore

                  ~ 1861 ~ 1941

 

Perched on the banks of the Coplay Creek, a beautiful male North American Cardinal gazes upon his reflection on an April evening along the Ironton Rail Trail, which loops more than nine miles through Whitehall Township, the Borough of Coplay and North Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania.

The Ironton Railroad was a shortline railroad in Lehigh County. Originally built in 1861 to haul iron ore and limestone to blast furnaces along the Lehigh River, traffic later shifted to carrying Portland Cement when local iron mining declined in the early 20th century. Much of the railroad had already been abandoned when it became part of Conrail in 1976, and the last of its trackage was removed in 1984.

 

In 1996, Whitehall Township purchased 9.2 miles of the right-of-way from Conrail, transforming it into the Ironton Rail Trail.


 

Thursday, May 23, 2024

Spring Watch Of The Cooper's Hawk ...

 

“Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.”

            ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

                 ~ 1803 ~ 1882

Basking in the evening sun, a Cooper’s Hawk peers from a high perch, gazing over the spring landscape in search of prey as sunset beckons in early April at Trexler Memorial Park, Allentown, Pennsylvania.