Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them.  Glorious and majestic are His deeds, and His righteousness endures forever.  He has caused His wonders to be remembered. (Psalm 111:1-3)

In the months leading up to the launch of this Wonder of Creation feature for RBC last fall, I was pondering just what I wanted to say first about the wonder of God’s creation that has captivated me since I first learned to walk [which would be 1943!]. To help me think on it, I took a ride in the country–which in West Michigan is mostly farmland.

It wasn’t long before I had to stop the car to observe a mass motion that had totally arrested my attention: butterflies—as far as I could see—dancing in the air above alfalfa fields on both sides of the road. It seemed they were virtually attacking the newly emerged violet blossoms of this common crop. It was a good thing there was no traffic on the narrow gravel road, because I was mesmerized by the sulfur and monarch butterflies whose colors had been “neonized” by the late afternoon sun. In my alley between those two feeding frenzies I said a few wow’s to myself—and to my Creator. And I thought again how much I love where I live. This was just the latest reason.

But our family has also lived in three other regions of the United States, and we loved living there too.  Truly “He has caused His wonders to be remembered.”  Memories of outdoor South Carolina are still fresh after 34 years: discovering wild scuppernong grapes twining over the fallen boards of an old farm shed, watching our boys feed persimmons to cows over the back fence, and cracking fresh pecans from the grove in front of the little house that served as our home while I was in graduate school.

Our Northern California sojourn provided memories as fond, but very different: watching the fog drape like frosting over the peaks of the Marin Headlands in the evening, turning giant bull-kelp bulbs into trumpets with my Swiss Army knife on a Point Reyes beach, clamming and fishing with my boys on the shore of Tomales Bay, and watching the aerobatics of a white-tailed kite seeking dinner for her fledglings over the ever-picturesque hills of the coast range with their bright golden grass and deep green live oaks. [You can see the tan roof of our Northern California home just to the right of the tall yellow-green poplars in this photo, which you can enlarge by clicking on it.]

In Southern California it was our family’s favorite pocket beach at Moss Point in busy Laguna Beach where with your back to the shoreline, you could feel virtually isolated on a lonely island. There too was weird and wild Joshua Tree National Park providing the most exotic rock scrambling in country.  Then there was snorkeling over swaying kelp beds where bright orange, but timid, Garibaldi fish zipped down and away from you and not-timid harbor seals zipped up and at you. As our sons will tell you, being nose to nose with seals in surf-tumbled waters is a thrill one can never forget.
[For a slideshow of other Joshua Tree photos, click here.]

So my encouragement here is simple: just love where you’re at! There’s virtually no place in on earth where you cannot gain joy from God’s creation, and it is as close as the outdoors just beyond your back door. Spider webs gleaming with pearls of dew on your patio chairs in the morning, “horsetail” cirrus clouds forming and reforming overhead, sandhill cranes “crawking” and reeling in the sky above your apartment, or katydids scritch-scritch-scritching in the tree outside your bedroom window. Attune yourself to the sounds, scents, and motions of the natural world that every day can teach you more and more about the One who created you, loves you, and wants to fill you with wonder beyond measure.

[Monarch butterfly, scuppernong, and Garibaldi fish images from Wikipedia]

I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever.  Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.  On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate. [Psalm 145:1-5]

While we appreciate many of the benefits of modern technology, one of the negative results of our technological progress is its capacity to isolate us from the natural world—our Savior’s creation.

Almost imperceptibly many of us have lost touch with the natural world around us, and as a result, we’ve lost a vital sensitivity that helps us understand and appreciate God and His creative power as David did in this psalm.

In addition, we’ve lost a much-needed source of healing for the human spirit.  “Take time to smell the flowers” is not idle advice. And as Francis Schaeffer reminded us, “the death of our joy in nature is leading to the death of nature itself.”  Experiencing and enjoying the outdoors is a key antidote for much of what ails us in these stressful times.

Finally, we are losing familiarity with the creation as a source of knowledge and inspiration that instructed the preachers and poets of old.

Consider these:

- Robert Burns who, touched by plowing up a mouse’s nest, exclaimed, “The best-laid plans of mice and men oft go astray, and leave us naught but grief and pain for promised joy!

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who, pondering depressions on a sandy beach, drew this analogy: “Lives of all great men remind us we can make our lives sublime and, departing, leave behind us footprints on the sands of time.”

- Thomas Gray who, reflecting on the noble souls who dwell unheralded in country cottages, wants us to remember that, “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air.”

- Robert Frost who, comparing his life’s journey to a walk in the autumn forest, tells us that “two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

- William Cullen Bryant who, observing a lone waterfowl in flight, mused, “He who, from zone to zone / Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, / In the long way I must tread alone, / Will guide my steps aright.”

- Joaquin Miller, who, examining a tree, exulted, “Ten thousand leaves on every tree, / And each a miracle to me; / And yet there be men who question God!”

How long has it been since you have been inspired by God’s creation to see with the vision of a poet?  If it’s been more than a few months, you probably need a nature refresher.

Our Relation To Others Through Creation (Part 2)

Be careful to seek out all the commandments of the Lord your God, that you may possess this good land, and leave it as an inheritance for your children after you forever (1 Chr. 28:8). If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever (1 Tim. 5:8 NIV).

In the 1980s, commentators often called the younger generation the “Me Generation” or the “Now Generation.” They saw a disturbing attitude among young people that in essence said, “I want it all, and I want it now.”

Considering the greed and materialism the younger generation saw in adults, the cumulative effect of thousands of hours of exposure to “consumer” advertising, the loss of interest in history, the disintegration of the institutions of family and marriage, and the decline of religious values, it is understandable that they would be characterized by self-centeredness.

Contrast that with the attribute of altruism—unselfish concern for the welfare of others. When the Christian values of faith in an eternal God, compassion for others, self-sacrifice, and hope for the future disappear from the general culture, there is little chance that altruism will survive. In fact, most people today would likely have difficulty even defining the term altruism.

As the combined Scripture passages above indicate, people of the Word have a responsibility to provide for their children and to leave for them an inheritance of faith and the gift of good land—a creation respected and well-kept.

Christian farmer-philosopher Wendell Berry has written a number of books that underscore the broad meaning of community—community that includes our ancestors, our current family members and neighbors, our animals and land, and our descendants. These words from the book What Are People For? have caused me to consider more carefully the legacy I am leaving:

We do not need to devise a “world of the future”; if we take care of the world of the present, the future will have received full justice from us. A good future is implicit in the soils, forests, grasslands, marshes, deserts, mountains, rivers, lakes, and oceans that we have now; the only valid “futurology” available to us is to take care of those things. We have no need to contrive and dabble at “the future of the human race”; we have the same pressing need that we have always had—to love, care for, and teach our children (p.188).

Berry elaborates on this last line in the book Another Turn Of The Crank:

I know of nothing that so strongly calls into question our ability to care for the world as our present abuses of our own reproductivity. How can we take care of other creatures, all born like ourselves from the world’s miraculous fecundity, if we have forsaken the qualities of culture and character that inform the nurture of children. . . . Whatever the reason, it is a fact that we are now conducting a sort of general warfare against children, who are being aborted or abandoned, abused, drugged, bombed, neglected, poorly raised, poorly fed, poorly taught, and poorly disciplined. Many of them will not only find no worthy work but no work of any kind. All of them will inherit a diminished, diseased, and poisoned world. We will visit upon them not only our sins but our debts. We have set before them thousands of examples—governmental, industrial, and recreational—suggesting that the violent way is the best way. And then we have the hypocrisy to be surprised and troubled when they carry guns and use them (pp.78-79).

This sobers me. As one who believes in Christ, I’d like to think he’s describing only non-Christian people. But I’m afraid I see many of these behaviors and attitudes among ourselves. We’re a long way from being the community that treasures our past, guards our present, and secures our future.

While we look for the any-moment return of Christ, we cannot use this expectation to excuse ourselves from the responsibility to leave God’s gift of creation to our children and their children well-kept and undiminished in its capacity to provide for them what it has provided for us.

[Landfill photos by Vera Sytch]

How can we celebrate the wonder of God in creation?
By doing everything we can to guard and protect its ability to provide for our children and their children the treasures we have enjoyed and received from it because of our parents’ and their parents’ care and concern.

Our Relation To Others Through Creation (Part 1)

Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life. I am the Lord. Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in his guilt. Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself (Lev. 19:16-18 NIV).

We tend to think of technology as something new. It isn’t. It’s been around since Adam. Technology is nothing more than creative people using the elements of the creation to do their work. Unfortunately, because of Adam’s sin and the resultant curse on the creation, technological processes and products have always been used in ways both evil and good. Cain could use a stick he had sharpened to till the soil—and he could use it to kill his brother.

Technology is significant today because of its extent, its effectiveness, and its capacity to bring about rapid change. Technological skill and increased scientific knowledge, along with the advantages and disadvantages, complicate living in ways unimagined just 50 years ago.

This knowledge, which arises out of God’s “other book” of general revelation, raises many questions about how Christians ought to live as they seek to glorify the Creator through obedience to His mandates—in particular the mandate to love our neighbor. Many pages could be written to illustrate both the benefits and dangers we have inherited through our technology. Included in the discussion would be issues like human-caused global climate change, air and water pollution, soil erosion, noise pollution, species loss, and fisheries depletion.

The point of such a delineation for Christians would be to understand that the possibility for us to negatively influence our neighbor’s life and livelihood has increased a thousandfold since Bible times. This understanding increases our responsibility to consider others in all we do. It is tempting for us to ignore information about the possible negative effects of our behavior and lifestyles. But it is just as sinful to do that today as it was when life was simpler.

We who believe in Christ the Creator have an obligation to make all our choices with compassionate concern for our neighbors next door, down stream, or down wind from us. Technology can make our living easier, more comfortable, more exciting, and more profitable. At the same time, it can devastate God’s creation in such a way that suffering is created for people on the other side of the street—and on the other side of the globe.

How can we celebrate the wonder of God in creation?
By working diligently to see that our use of the creation does not hurt our neighbor—near or far, directly or indirectly.

Our Relation to God Through Creation (Part 2)

Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom He has redeemed from the hand of the enemy, and gathered out of the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south (Ps. 107:1-3).

Baby Jesus with bird

I have a friend who is a professor of ecology in a state university. He’s also a committed Christian. A few years ago, he was presenting a Christian view of ecology to an audience that included a nationally influential Jewish rabbi. At the conclusion of the presentation, the rabbi remarked to him, “Your talk almost convinces me that I ought to reconsider Jesus.”

My friend, of course, was amazed to hear such a confession. It affirmed for him that a Christian view of creation and its significance is rarely understood outside Christian circles—and only a little less rarely within Christian circles. From that experience, and many others, this university professor discovered that when the Christian truth about the earth is presented in the hearing of unbelievers, it compels them to listen.

[Many classical paintings depict the infant Jesus with a bird---symbolizing Him as both Savior and Creator, loving people and His creation.]

The biblical view of the origin, meaning, and destiny of the earth, in combination with the whole of the gospel, provides the only answer for the world’s environmental ills and crises caused by sin. In his book The Body, Charles Colson concurs:

We should be contending for truth in every area of life. Not for power or because we are taken with some trendy cause, but humbly to bring glory to God. For this reason, Christians should be the most ardent ecologists. Not because we would rather save spotted owls than cut down trees whose bark provides lifesaving medicine, but because we are mandated to keep the Garden, to ensure that the beauty and grandeur God has reflected in nature is not despoiled. We should care for animals. Not because whales are our brothers, but because animals are part of God’s kingdom over which we are to exercise dominion (p.197).

The sad fact is that the church has poorly understood and demonstrated the biblical principles concerning our stewardship role over creation. In his book on the Christian view of ecology, Francis Schaeffer talks about the responsibility of the church to address the environmental stress suffered by God’s creation:

A truly biblical Christianity has a real answer to the ecological crisis. It offers a balanced and healthy attitude to nature, arising from the truth of its creation by God; it offers the hope here and now of substantial healing in nature of some of the results of the Fall, arising from the truth of redemption in Christ. . . . A Christian-based science and technology should consciously try to see nature substantially healed, while waiting for the complete future healing at Christ’s return (Pollution And The Death Of Man: The Christian View Of Ecology, p.81).

As followers of Christ, if we are not demonstrating care and concern for the handiwork of the God we say we love and worship, we are missing a great opportunity to show the world that the truth of God’s Word addresses all the world’s distresses. In addition, we will suffer from the spiritual anemia that comes from a failure to apply the whole counsel of God to our Christian behavior.

We need to understand that we cannot demonstrate respect for our Creator and Savior at the same time we are demonstrating disrespect for His creation. After all, we and creation will share in the eventual restoration and reconciliation of all things (Acts 3:20-21; Col. 1:20).

How can we celebrate the wonder of God in creation?
By taking every opportunity to demonstrate to the watching world a proper concern for all things that come from the hand of our Creator.