The Beginning

Hello, everyone! I'd like to welcome you to my blog, which I've created to showcase the microcosm of God's creation that exists around my house in South Carolina. As the title suggests, I'm fascinated particularly by slugs, but I also photograph other creatures such as butterflies, toads, birds, crickets, and snails. Now, you might find some of these uninteresting, creepy, or disgusting, and I'll admit that those were my initial reactions. However, when you come to understand how "fearfully and wonderfully made" each of these creatures is, you will admire it as God's handiwork. His fingerprints are all over the earth, and it's both humbling and uplifting to discover the care with which He fashioned something as seemingly simple as a slug. To emphasize this complexity, I will try to provide as much scientific background as I can to accompany the pictures. I'm not a scientist, and the chances are you're not either, but God intended for us to be stewards of the earth and everything in it, and thus we should be respectful and considerate in dealing with our fellow creatures. Remember, if God cares about even the most insignificant creature, providing for it every day, how much more will He provide for us, who were made in His image!

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

 So God created man in his own image,
    in the image of God he created him;
    male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Genesis 1:26-28

Christ said:

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." Matthew 6:25-33

So, I hope you enjoy the blog. Keep sluggin' along!