On a recent trip to the Midwest, my affection for moving landscapes led to my stopping the rental car I was driving and pulling off the side of the country road I was on in Indiana, pulling out my old iPhone and taking a few pictures (see below). They do not do justice to the powerful impressions the Midwest made upon me that cold morning.

As l looked out, my years of reading seemed to bubble up amidst the cold. Psalm 8 came to mind:

O Lord, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
²     Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
you have established strength because of your foes,
    to still the enemy and the avenger.

³ When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
    the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
⁴ what is man that you are mindful of him,
    and the son of man that you care for him?

⁵ Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
    and crowned him with glory and honor.
⁶ You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
    you have put all things under his feet,
⁷ all sheep and oxen,
    and also the beasts of the field,
⁸ the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
    whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

⁹ O Lord, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Detractors? I can hear detractors now: “What? Just ice and snow blanketing fields of harvested corn in Indiana?”

Well, yes. But how can one not be moved by even that? How is it not beautiful? What does it say if we don’t pause and appreciate moments and scenes like this?