Many considered John Muir to be a sort of modern John the Baptist, “a voice crying in the wilderness”—for the wilderness.  His cry was not for repentance in preparation for the first coming of Messiah, but it was a cry for repentance in preparation for the second coming of Messiah, even though Muir himself probably had little faith in and awareness of Jesus as the coming Prince of Peace, the true hope for the kind of earth he longed for.

Biblical John the Baptist appeared, as prophesied in Isaiah 40:3-5, as “a voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord….’”  He spoke of the fact that “all mankind will see God’s salvation.”  In John’s day God’s salvation was revealed in the first coming of the Messiah which led to His death, burial, and resurrection.  Ultimate salvation for man and the creation was not fully attained at that time, but the provision was fully complete in the atoning act of the Son of God.  And from that time to this, God the Father has seen all believers as “white as snow” because we are under the blood of the Savior.

To prepare Israel for the First Advent, John the Baptist called the Jews of his day to be baptized in an act of “repentance for sin leading to forgiveness”—a cleansing that looked forward to the soon-coming Messiah. When the Jews who came to be baptized asked John what they were to do in their daily lives as a result of his baptism, he did not call them to more religious ritual, instead he responded by declaring that they must share both food and clothing with the poor, that they were not to defraud one another or extort money from one another, and they were to be content with their lot (behavior that’s always been kosher).

Today as we are looking for the Second Advent of the Messiah who will this time come in power, as the last Adam, to restore the groaning creation and “destroy those who destroy the earth” (Rev. 18:11), we all can take on the role of John the Baptist.  We too can call for repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  We can call for a return to justice not only for the poor and disenfranchised, but also for the entire creation.  We can call for a denunciation of self-centeredness and materialism that is destroying the earth and plead with our fellow believers to begin to act toward the creation like we will be expected to act when our prayer for the coming of God’s kingdom will finally be answered.  We can pray for, hope for, and work toward a revelation of the “first fruits” of the Messianic kingdom even now (Romans 8:23).

In John’s day, despite the truthfulness of his proclamation, only a minority responded.  Nonetheless the Messiah did make His first appearance and did make atonement for human sin and provide for the end of the curse.  No doubt only a minority will respond this time to prepare the way for the coming King, but He will come, He will be victorious, we will receive our final adoption, and there will be one grand and glorious united doxology as we harmonize with the billions of heavenly bodies as they “join with all nature in manifold witness to [God's] great faithfulness, mercy, and love.”  There will be “joy to the world” as the reigning Messiah takes away all sin and sorrow, eliminates the thorns that “infest the ground,” and makes His blessings flow “far as the curse is found.”

Let us with faithfulness be John the Baptist to what could be the terminal generation of those compelled to struggle under the curse.  Let us be “a voice of one calling: In the desert prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God….  And the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all mankind together will see it” (Isa. 40:3-5 NIV).

NEW YEARS’ IDEA: Consider adopting a behavior or discontinuing a behavior as a new sort of “sacrament” that looks forward to the restoration, redemption, and reunification of the earth.  It’s important to make this behavior personal, not legalistic.  You may even choose to discontinue a practice clearly allowed by God in this current administration of His grace that may likely not be a part of the restoration period (the “peaceable kingdom”) we will experience after the Second Advent of Jesus.

Things you could possibly do this year:

1.  Garden for food, fellowship, and charity
2.  Plant and use herbs for health purposes
3.  Eat significantly less red meat or meat from factory farms
4.  Indulge less in meaningless entertainment
5.  Do a “creation care” project
6.  Consume less and recycle more
7.  Take a natural history course
8.  Become an interpretive naturalist
9.  Take children from the inner city camping or hiking
10.  Do nature arts or crafts

See you outdoors!

Dean

In one of his books, John Muir mistakenly attributed the death of a simple-minded neighbor to the man’s brother who was rumored to have forced him into such hard labor that the physically overtaxed man died and fell forward onto a pile of firewood he was splitting.  Though no names were mentioned, the accused man’s son recognized that it was his father that the naturalist was describing as the abuser.  So the man, then in his seventies like Muir, informed Muir that the rumor was not true—yet still confessing that he, like Muir, had been regularly beaten by his father merely for not working hard enough or meeting his father’s nearly impossible requirements.  Muir felt so bad about the mistake that he had the publisher redo the book galleys.  In a letter to his former neighbor, however, he spoke of his feelings about abusive parenting which grew out of his experience as the oldest son of Daniel Muir:

When the rod is falling on the flesh of a child, and, what may oftentimes be worse, heartbreaking scolding falling on its tender little heart, it makes the whole family seem far from the Kingdom of Heaven. In all the world, I know of nothing more pathetic and deplorable than a broken-hearted child, sobbing itself to sleep after being unjustly punished by a truly pious and conscientious misguided parent. . . .

Your father, like my own, was, I devoutly believe, a sincere Christian, abounding in noble qualities, preaching the Gospel without money or price while working hard for a living, clearing land, blacksmithing, able for anything, and from youth to death never abating one jot his glorious foundational religious enthusiasm. I revere his memory with that of my father and the New England Puritan types of the best American pioneers whose unwavering faith in God’s eternal righteousness forms the basis of our country’s greatness.

Editor of The Life and Letters of John Muir, William Bade, wrote of this incident:

In accordance with a fairly common custom among God-fearing pioneers of earlier days, morning and evening family worship was regularly observed in the Muir household. But how easily morning prayers may become a devastating substitute for a day of real religion was apparently exemplified glaringly in both these households. Under such circumstances children often react sharply, not only against the external forms, but also against the substance of religion. The religious convictions of a shallower nature than John Muir’s would never have survived the bigotry and rigor of his father’s training.  [Emphasis mine].

In spite of the unloving, abusive nature of his father and the ugliness of Daniel Muir’s “Christianity,” John Muir’s writings exude expressions of God’s love and of the unfathomable beauty of God’s creation.  An example of this is Muir’s thoughts on finding a dead Yosemite bear:

Toiling in the treadmills of life we hide from the lessons of Nature.  We gaze morbidly through civilized fog upon our beautiful world clad with seamless beauty, and see ferocious beasts and wastes and deserts.  But savage deserts and beasts and storms are expressions of God’s power inseparably companioned by love.  Civilized man chokes his soul as the heathen Chinese their feet.  We depreciate bears. . . .   They are not companions of men but children of God, and His charity is broad enough for bears. . . .  God bless Yosemite bears! [Read Job 38-41]

To me this sounds a bit like the biblical “naturalist” David who wrote of the Creator, “You bring darkness, it becomes night, and all the beasts of the forest prowl.  The lions roar for their prey and seek their food from God.  The sun rises, and they steal away; they return and lie down in their dens.  Then man goes out to his work, to his labor until evening.  How many are your works, O Lord!  In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures” (Psalm 104:20-24).

Daniel Muir’s, and consequently John Muir’s, “Christianity” suffered a great deal from mistaken understandings of biblical truth about the creation.  It seems, however, that even more than a hundred years later, followers of Christ the Savior are still depreciating the natural world for which Christ the Creator was, in part, crowned with thorns to restore, liberate, reunify, and reconcile to the Father (Acts 3:21; Romans 8:21; Ephesians 1:10; Colossians 1:20).

See you outdoors,

Dean

“Come here quick!” always startles me—especially coming from my wife, Marge.  Is there a fire on the stove, a flood in the bathroom, or something worse?  But when followed by “You have to see this!” my heart rate settles back down.  What I had to see, on Christmas morning, was indeed something to see.  Standing on the step leading to our garage was a large immature northern goshawk pulling the feathers from a “snowbird”—a junco it had just captured and killed.

Quickly grabbing my camera, I was able to catch a series of shots as a little bird was becoming an outdoor Christmas dinner for a big bird—while a much bigger bird in our oven was being prepared for our indoor Christmas dinner: carnivores all.

My bird book says that this hawk of the forest is rare or uncommon, but in our yard it’s the most common predator to come our birdfeeders—hence adding another meaning to “birdfeeder.”  Our yard has been supplying feeders of this particular species now for about four years.  It’s a hawk in the accipiter family, raptors that usually inhabit the woods and feed on small birds and mammals.  The other hawk families are the buteos, which are the open land soaring hawks like the red-tailed hawk, and the harriers, which hover close to the ground like the marsh hawk.

Lytton Musselman (the “Bible Plants” professor whose site I have linked to from WOC) and I had a run-in with an adult northern goshawk late last spring while hiking in an old-growth patch of red pines in northern Michigan.  Apparently it was a female who had young on the ground somewhere near us, and she followed us and screamed at us for almost two hundred yards—finally bidding us good riddance with a pass about three feet above our heads, the whoosh of her wings making us both duck.  We left the woods with great admiration for some stately native red pines and a very bold bird.

So from my experience, I wouldn’t consider the northern goshawk either rare or uncommon.  It’s scientific name is Accipiter gentilis. If that has anything to do with “gentle,” I’d call in a definite misnomer!

See you outdoors!

Dean

Currently lost in my files is a print of a painting that depicts Jesus in the arms of Mary with a small bird perched on His finger. That and this etching in which it seems that Jesus is instructing Mary on the merits of a rose were apparent artistic attempts to link Jesus the infant Savior to Jesus the loving Creator. The intent of this artwork is a good reminder for us as we consider the Christ of Christmas, God in human flesh, in the days immediately ahead.

Think of the earthly, material trappings that surrounded the birth of Jesus: the humble stable; the domestic animals; the shepherds sent by the angels from the fields where youthful David used to tend sheep and where Ruth, the Moabite ancestress of Jesus, caught the attention of Boaz; the glowing pointer in the heavens; and the rough linen swaddling cloth beaten from the flax stalks from the nearby hillsides. All of these give significance to the physical nature of Jesus and His birth that I feel we spiritualize far more than we should.

The creation Jesus entered is the creation He made, is the creation in which we live, is the creation John Muir loved, is the creation that groans under the heavy hand of sinful humanity, is the creation to which He will return, is the creation that He will redeem and reconcile to His Father, is the creation that in ways beyond imagination redeemed mankind will remain stewards of and continue to get sustenance from, and is the creation that will be blessed with the peace promised by the reign of Messiah whom we celebrate so joyously in the prophecies of Isaiah and in the music of George Frederick Handel.

Not surprisingly, it’s also the music of Handel that graces the poetry of hymn-writer Isaac Watts in one of Christianity’s Christmas favorites: “Joy to the World.”  In the carol we hear the prophecies of Isaiah and John of the Revelation repeated: “No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground; He comes to make His blessings flow far as the curse is found” (Revelation 22:1-3).  Keep in mind that while we sing this carol to celebrate Jesus’ first advent, it is written about His second advent—after which the creation will once again become the “peaceable kingdom” pictured by Isaiah (chapters 11 & 65).

May these wonderful Scripture passages grace our Christmas and rekindle not only hope for our own redemption, but also fill us with joy in recognizing that Jesus will not abandon His creation. It too has hope.  Someday, in fact, “all creatures here below” will praise their Creator and Savior along with us all!

Revelation 5:9-13 They sang a new song: “You [Jesus] are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.” Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they sang: “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!” Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!”

John 1: 1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.  In him was life, and that life was the light of men.

Hebrews 1:1-3 In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways,  but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.  The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.

Colossians 1:15-20   He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.  He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Romans 8:19-23   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.

So the “Good News” promises grace not only to redeemed people, but to the redeemed creation as well—the wonders of which will never cease to amaze us.

See you outdoors!

Dean

If you select “Author Resources” on the right sidebar and go to “Discovery Series,” you will find that RBC has published a number of 32-page booklets on the theme of “celebrating the wonder of creation.”  You can read them online, make copies of them, or order multiple copies of them.  They would make challenging and lightweight reading material for a hike or good core reading for small group studies on thinking Christianly about the natural world.

One of the booklets that relates to the issues raised by John Muir is “Celebrating the Wonder of the Wilderness.”  Here’s a quote from the booklet:

Followers of Christ have so many reasons to value the wilderness.  Because we see the natural world as entrusted to us by an infinitely wise Creator, it’s not difficult to see the wilderness as a treasure of inestimable worth.  It allows the wild creatures to fulfill their God-given responsibility to multiply and fill their portion of the earth.

Caring for the wilderness is an aspect of dominion and stewardship mandated to us by our Creator.  Further, it helps to preserve our own health and to assure our continued survival.  Further still, it no doubt holds many future benefits we are currently not even aware of.

Nancy Newhall reminded us over 50 years ago, in a book featuring the masterful black-and-white wilderness photos of Ansel Adams, that “the wilderness holds answers to questions man has not yet learned to ask.”

 

Check out the other booklets as well.

See you outdoors!

Dean