Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.
(Luke 5:16)

I bless the camp counselor who first sent me out into “the creation” for a personal quiet time alone.  It was at Camp Michawana in west-central Michigan.  My dad was on the board of the camp.  He had been since Lance Latham, the founder of AWANA, was compelled by a Michigan state land-use policy decision to move his Chicago-based youth camping program out of Michigan to Wisconsin in 1945. The camp program was conducted for about eight weeks each summer at facilities built in the thirties by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).  It was set on the sandy shore of a shallow little lake.

The counselor believed it was beneficial for his boys to have a time of solitude and quietness with God for about a half hour each morning; so we were assigned to go into the woods to find our private spots.  The significance of his assignment is highlighted by the fact that some fifty years later, I could still take you to that spot.  Images of it remain vivid in my mind: A mossy hump at the base of a big white pine that leaned over the shore of Long Lake.  Some of the tree’s roots arched into the water where their shadows provided cover for shelter-seeking bass.  Turtles, frogs, and dragonflies were my companions as I sat there contemplating my Bible-study lesson for the day.  I realize now that the biblical principles I was consciously absorbing were virtually parallel in benefit to the spiritual values I was receiving unconsciously from being alone and receptive to the voice of God and to the influence of natural beauty.

Several years ago I picked up an old book titled Work, Play, and the Gospel, by Malcolm Spencer.  In his chapter on the beauty and life of the Spirit he speaks of the significance of natural beauty to our souls:

Grace is the word which we attach preeminently to that quality of the life of Jesus which makes us long to be like Him, and it is also the word we use to express that overflowing bounty of God which produces in man incalculable inflows of spiritual life.  We have but to awake to the beauty of things, and to believe that life is meant for discovery and reproduction of beauty, because God is like that, and from every corner of the world where beauty lurks, spiritual life and energy come flooding into our souls.

John Muir reminds us that “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.”  This is  echoed by Marya Mannes:  “The great omission in American life is solitude; not loneliness, for this is an alienation that thrives most in the midst of crowds, but that zone of time and space, free from the outside pressures, which is the incubator of the spirit.”

Take some time today to tend to your soul by experiencing solitude, quietness, and dwelling on something beautiful from the hand of our Creator, be it the African violet on the window sill, the hummingbird at the feeder, or a walk in the park.