I love just about anything scientific: ornithology, zoology, botany, meteorology, astronomy.  When I go outside, I hardly know what to look at: the birds, the clouds, the animals, the trees, or the night sky! Many Christians, however, have a bad attitude about science.  They think that because so many outspoken scientists are atheists, science must somehow lead to disbelief in God.  Not so.  In fact, the Apostle Paul points out that the natural world is itself evidence for the existence of God (Rom 1:21).

I’ve found that three R’s help me keep my biblical focus about the natural world: regard, respect, relationship.

Regard: The Bible tells us that God attends the death of a sparrow. Think of that! If the great Originator of the sparrow also attends its death, how can we care less? Most of the species extinctions mankind has witnessed are the result of our failure to give attention to what God gives His attention to.  Learning to love what the Creator loves can only increase the intensity of our spiritual experiences.  Think of all the biblical stories where people met God in the wilderness.  Could it be that we often miss the voice of God because we are regarding only human entertainments and artifacts?

Respect: George MacDonald, 19^th century Christian author whose writing inspired C. S. Lewis, had a reverent respect for the natural world.  He wrote, “The flowers are joyous, inarticulate children, come with vague messages from the Father of all.  If I confess that what they say to me sometimes makes me weep, how can I call my feeling for them anything but love?”
The LORD is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made (Psalm 145:9).

Relationship: Evangelical theologian John Stott is an avid birder who motivated the founder of A Rocha, a Christian nature conservancy.  He writes, “Christian people should surely have been in the vanguard of the movement for environmental responsibility, because of our doctrines of creation and stewardship.  Did God make the world? Does He sustain it? Has He committed its resources to our care? His personal concern for His own creation should be sufficient to inspire us to be equally concerned.”

Our relationship to the natural world is that of steward—the one who is responsible to care for what God has made. Homo sapiens is the only responsible species. How responsible have we been?

See you outdoors,

Dean

Because so much of our time is spent with the regular affairs of men—and spent insulated and isolated in homes, offices, stores, and cars—I think most of us have lost the awareness of a critical fact about the natural world: the committed and obedient follower of Christ really has a greater affinity with the natural creation than with the world of “those who are perishing” (those who are rejecting Christ).  Why is that?

1) Because both we and the natural world acknowledge, celebrate, and worship God, the Creator.

“Let the floods clap [their] hands: let the hills be joyful together” (Psalm 98:8); “For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap [their] hands” (Isaiah 55:12).
[I believe from Scriptures like these that all created things in their own natures can respond to their Creator.]

What about the perishing?
“[The God-deniers] exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:24-25).

2) Because both we and the natural world groan under the curse and are both looking forward with eager anticipation to the coming of Christ and to the restoration that will occur at His coming.

“The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:18-23);

What about the perishing?
“In the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, ‘Where is this “coming” he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.’ But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed. . . .” (2 Peter 3:3-5).

3) Because both we and the creatures of the natural world will join our voices in that great doxology of the end times to celebrate the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ that released us both from sin and the curse.

“And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, ‘Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever’” (Revelation 5:13).

What about the perishing?
“[The disobedient] are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts” (Ephesians 4:18).

4) Because both we and the natural world are grateful recipients of the love of God.

“The LORD is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. The LORD is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made” (Psalm 145:8-9). “Let everything that has breath praise the LORD. Praise the LORD” (Psalm 150:6). “The LORD is righteous in all his ways and loving towards all he has made” (Psalm 145:17).  “Surely the righteous will praise your name and the upright will live before you” (Psalm 140:13).

What about the perishing?
“For although [the rebellious] knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened” (Romans 1:21).

5) Because we and the natural world will enjoy peace (shalom) together in that great Kingdom to come.

“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:6-9).

What about the perishing?
“The cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars– their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur.” (Revelation 21:8)

These verses should give us a double motivation: to appreciate more the natural world that will share the coming redemption with us—and to motivate us to reach the lost so they too will share it with us: you, me, our presently lost neighbors, and all the restored wonders of creation basking in the everlasting love of our Creator and Savior.

See you outdoors,

Dean

My friend Bob Barr, director of support services for the Au Sable Institute for Environmental Studies, once shared with me how the wonder of creation made a profound impact on his life–an impact that is still bearing fruit.  [See the Website Link to Au Sable in the sidebar.]

Bob had returned from his tour of duty in Vietnam healthy in body but wounded emotionally and spiritually.  Though he was a follower of Christ, he felt estranged from his Creator and confused about what God was doing in his life-indeed, what God was doing in and with the world.  He was angry and frustrated with God.  Hoping to at least get relief from dwelling on this inner turmoil, he joined a group of friends on a backpacking trip into the mountains of Colorado.  While the excitement and toil of the trek distracted him temporarily from his spiritual struggle, the restlessness in his soul kept breaking through into his consciousness-compelling him one evening to go off alone into the alpine tundra that surrounded their campsite high above the tree line.

Here’s the story Bob told:

I remember walking away from the camp one evening and looking across a narrow valley.  We were at 11,500 feet, camped at the foot of a sheer rock face that went up to 13,800 feet. The sun was beginning to set-filling the sky and landscape with spectacular colors, and I was struck by God’s power and the majesty of the world that He had created. Then my eyes were drawn down to my feet where tuffets of tundra grass were crowned with little flowers. On the side of one tuft was a little opening, and a small bird was nesting there-surrounded by beautiful white and blue wildflowers.  As I bent down to look closer, the bird flew away leaving behind tiny eggs the size of jellybeans. At once I was overwhelmed with God’s presence, thinking about His power and authority and majesty as the Creator of these mountains.

He had created this vast vista, but He also cared to create beautiful little flowers and these tiny birds to live in this harsh environment. They were nesting there very comfortably-God caring for the small things in the midst of this awesome bigness. His presence was then was so real to me that I still get emotional thinking about it more than thirty years later. I felt His presence so strongly that I couldn’t stand up. I was forced to my knees. And if you can hear an audible voice of God, I heard that voice, and His words to me were, “Bob, I am with you. And everything is okay.”

In the quiet wonder of a mountain wilderness, Bob discovered the presence of One who long ago had said, “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10).  A sojourn in the wilderness produced, once again, the profound spiritual healing that so many followers of Christ have experienced over the centuries.

[If you have a story like this to tell,
please feel free to share it.]

See you outdoors,

Dean

I Went out for a hike with two granddaughters last evening: Ava and Anna. They were really disappointed that we got to our favorite lake after sundown—until we got mooned.  I mean we were really mooned!  While tossing bright-yellow autumn sassafras leaves on the dark blue water, we looked up to find the full moon sneaking slowly up and over a lakeside copse of fiery maples.

And once we focused on what the evening light was doing on the water, we got a Monet experience.  Well, I got the Monet, but their being 5 and 3, they merely got the impression—which I suppose was exactly Monet’s creative point.  Now as much as I love Monet, I do have to say that the divine Creator left with me, and I hope our granddaughters as well, visual impressions a bit more awe-inspiring.

It didn’t hurt the impressions at all that three swans, a dozen Canada geese and a few Mallards were experiencing the dramatic dusk with us. I always wonder if they see beauty too.

See you outdoors,

Dean

I walked home for lunch today (.72 miles one way according to Google Earth) and I still sense the pleasure of being showered with spent needles from a grove of white pines along my way.  The path was littered with pine straw and the unique pitch-tipped cones that make the tree so easily identifiable.  But best of all was the scent–that wonderful pine fragrance that emanates from the sun-warmed boughs carried by the clear fall air of West Michigan. 

It reminded me of an excerpt from a book by George MacDonald.  I had already been touched in my soul for years by the sensory delights of the piney woods when I came across MacDonald’s novel The Musician’s Quest about a man drawn by nature to nature’s God.  Robert Falconer, the main character, who had been constantly repulsed by spiritually stagnant and/or phony church people, was out on a walk pondering whether God was truly there when “a gentle wind, laden with pine odors from the sun-heated trees behind him, flapped its tight wing in his face.”  This scent and all nature around him soon became a divine messenger:

Strange as it may sound to those who have never thought of such things except in connection with Sundays and Bibles and churches and sermons, that which was now working in Falconer’s mind was the first dull movement of the greatest need that the human heart possesses–the need of God.  There must be truth in the scent of that pinewood; someone must mean it. There must be a glory in those heavens that depends not upon our imagination; some power greater than they must dwell in them.  Some spirit must move in that wind that haunts us with a kind of human sorrow; some soul must look up to us from the eye of that starry flower.  Little did Robert think that such was his need–that his soul was searching after the One whose form was constantly presented to him, but as constantly obscured by the words without knowledge spoken in the religious assemblies of the land.  Little did he realize that he was longing without knowing it on Saturday for that from which on Sunday he would be repelled, again without knowing it.*

How many are touched by nature’s God in this way?  And how many of us are insensitive to it as we carry on from week to week in churches that may be repelling such susceptible souls by our collective insensitivities.  I often feel that the part of the creation that was not made in the Creator’s image is sometimes a better witness than we are. 

* Bethany House Publishers, pp 95-96