By far I prefer the cropped design. Nice job! It feels much more balanced than the other designs, but still feels a little unbalanced because the tunnel curves away in a certain direction. Perhaps if you right aligned all the text so it matches the exit of the tunnel and moved it over slightly to the left the design would appear more balanced.
As for the other revised design with the bridge photo, I like it better than your original, but I don’t know that I would use the color brown for the overlay there. There is a lot of that color in the photo with the stones in the bridge, and it isn’t a color that draws my attention. Perhaps if you tried a nice green? Good call on the overlay, though!
I would highly encourage you not to stick with one layout for the text across your multiple designs. Experiment. Try some new things. The layout you created will work well in some situations, but not in others. Now that you know that design works, paste the verse in with no formatting and start again. See what happens! Some of my favorite designs came out of taking some time to experiment and see what was possible. 🙂
I find it a little odd that “Trust” and “paths” have a drop-shadow but the rest of the verse does not… Try to keep things consistent across your design. If part of it has a drop-shadow, but it isn’t there to show it as being closer to the viewer than the rest of the text, either remove it or use it so the design is consistent.
You’re definitely improving! Keep up the good work.