Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. (Romans 1:20 NIV)

Conservation of energy. Campfires have to rank near the top among the joys of a wilderness adventure. One of the first things we do when we reach a campsite is to build a fire and seek to maintain it. Then come nightfall we sit cross-legged and become transfixed by the phenomenon of carbon being consumed and being turned into light and heat energy and carbon dioxide (CO2) that the trees from which we took our fuel are “ingesting” and turning into oxygen so that it can help burn the wood the next generation will use to build their campfires!

What a delight. What a mystery. All the energy and matter the Creator gave us in the beginning is still here: the definitive example of recycling! For all our human wisdom, we don’t really know much about the why and how of this fact. When it comes down to it, as Einstein discovered, we ultimately can’t even tell the difference between matter and energy. Perhaps it’s this that fascinates us about campfires—and the reason that building a campfire almost becomes a sacrament, a celebration of creation that honors the ultimate inscrutability of our Creator.

That’s no doubt also the fact that drew wilderness-dwelling Moses to the burning bush, because for the first time a human being, as far as we know, was seeing the Author of matter and energy change the rules. And from that unusual fire came the voice identifying itself as the “I am”—the eternally existent One and the source of all things. That’s also the reason the religious authorities of first-century Israel were so astonished by Jesus’ confession that He too was the “I am.” The great Creator became our Savior!*

[*Take a little break here and read the lyrics and listen to the melody of "Down From His Glory," one of my favorite Christian songs as a youth---one often sung by George Beverly Shea.  Click here.  The tune, of course, is from the old Italian love song "O solo mio" that you can hear in dramatic fashion here.]

Astronomical extravagance and magnitude. Realizing how immense one galaxy is and how many stars, planets, and moons each one contains staggers the mind, but grasping the fact that there are billions of such galaxies is beyond the human mind’s capacity to take hold of. We think we can somehow bring into human scope the dimensions of God’s cosmic creation by using specific measures like “billions” and “light years.”

One night under the stars in the wilderness, however, is enough to show us that the extravagance and magnitude of the universe is beyond our imagination and beyond our mathematical calculations. Astronomers say, for instance, that one star is twenty million light years away and another is a billion light years distant from Earth—figures based on the speed of light (at 186,000 miles per second). In saying so, we think we’ve made the universe measurable. How foolish. How proud. Reality mocks the assumption that we can even approximate an ample grasp of the function and meaning of it all.

Wonderful life. Like light, energy, and matter, life is also a mystery to human beings. Scientists don’t know what it is or how it came into a cosmos that is almost totally hostile to life. And there is no evidence that it exists anywhere else in the universe. In the wild there is one constant celebration of life, the varieties of which are without number. That’s one reason that abuse of our wilderness areas seems to be so profane. Realizing that human beings are carelessly causing the extinction of thousands of life forms that are the miraculous handiwork of God ought to fill us with shame—and apprehension. The Bible affirms that God loves all that He has made. Certainly our destruction of these living creatures will not continue without negative consequences physically, emotionally, and spiritually for us all.  We are living as a diminished people because of the divinely proffered treasures we have already lost.  We should grieve at the thought that we are destroying more of them each day.

It is sobering to think about the following prophecy from the Revelation—one of many Scripture passages that should give us pause when we come to understand that our over-consumptive and under-careful use of these gifts from the hand of our Creator is leading to their destruction:

And the twenty-four elders, who were seated on their thrones before God, fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying: “We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, the One who is and who was, because you have taken your great power and have begun to reign. The nations were angry; and your wrath has come. The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your saints and those who reverence your name, both small and great—and for destroying those who destroy the earth” (Revelation 11:16-18).

[Next post: Fearful, but essential, death; awesome power; revitalizing stillness]