This is the fourth volume of Poetic Essays On the Big Questions of Life.

Who am I?

Why am I here?

What is my destiny?

These three questions have haunted the lives of virtually every thinking person on earth to one degree or another. They point to the very heart of our existence, and to our ultimate value, our worthiness to exist. Are we products of evolution from a primordial sea-soup, without any defined purpose in being here, or are we creations in the image of a Creator whose plan for us transcends our understanding?

The answers to these simple but profound questions dictate our decisions day by day, and ultimately the course of our careers, our friendships, our marriage partners, and how we interact within our families and communities. In many ways these answers direct our career pathway through life, and most assuredly influence our joy and fulfillment in everyday living.

I am stepping out by claiming that I have found answers - sound answers - to all three of these questions, and I am audacious enough to suggest that they are correct answers. They agree with what I understand is Truth, which is rooted in the great eternal God who made all things, and who sustains all things through the Word of His power and revelation.

But there the simplicity ends. My audacity has led to great conflicts with the realities of a corrupted earth and universe ... a corrupted human race that clings to existence day-by-day upon the whims of weather and cooperation ... neither of which often prosper to any race's benefit. We are always only weeks away from famine upon an earth that so often insults the farmer and gardener with drought, floods, heat, frost, or tempest.

As a farm boy raised close to nature, I have been so often forced from my peaceful home into the prairies and forests, the lakes, streams, and oceans of this wide earth to regain my bearings, to restore hope and gratitude, and to reset the pathway ahead when darkness threatens to overwhelm me. To leave the sterile unease of concrete jungles and flee to the forests and prairies of sanity has become a habit over the years - an addiction, one might say - and with that flight has emerged a continued stream of verbal expression that has leaped from my fingers. I cannot explain why, just that I must do it.

So ... here is a collection of some of those writing expounded over the years, some of them clearly poetic, and some of them bordering more on short essays. I attempted some way to categorize them to make them flow, but they have defied clear organization; each item is too complex to easily arrange in a coherent order. Thus, I have let them fall where they may within broad categories, and have applied pictures I have taken through the years to emphasize the messages. Photographing nature has been a passion much of my life; these images speak louder and more eloquently than my words.

I hope you enjoy these messages, and are brought into a closer association with the Creator as a result so you will be able to answer these three big questions a bit better yourself. Let us walk together through the prairies and forests of our land, our beautiful, God-given land that speaks to us so eloquently if we will but open our ears and listen.