Less than a week ago I was blessed with the opportunity to revisit California’s majestic Yosemite National Park, following in the footsteps of John Muir.  Yosemite provides probably the best earthly picture of paradise that can be imagined by the finite and fallen mind of man on an earth that awaits the coming of the final Paradise: the Kingdom of God under the reign of Jesus Christ, the Creator and Sustainer of the material world by which we are blessed.  Click here or on the “Ambling” menu item to visit through the eye-gate this great wonder of creation.

We know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them (1 John 4:16).

What do John Muir, George MacDonald, and Rob Bell have in common?  They believe(d) in the wonder and expansiveness of God’s love.  Of course John Muir and George MacDonald have gone to their reward, MacDonald in 1905 and Muir nine years later.  Rob Bell is alive, well, and preaching about God’s love—most recently in his controversial book Love Wins (You’d virtually have to have been deserted on a remote island the past few months not to have heard something about the book).

Rob Bell, in spite of his assurances to the contrary, has been called a Christian universalist on the basis of some of his rather loosely articulated thoughts and some deeply probing questions about a loving God sending people to “eternal torment” in the lake of fire—especially those who have never heard the gospel.  George MacDonald, whom C. S. Lewis considered his mentor in the faith, was what I call a “hopeful universalist”: he did not claim that the Bible actually teaches that all souls will eventually be saved but felt the love of God was so great that He could not permit even one soul to be lost permanently. He was convinced that a loving God would pursue and purge from sin—even by hellfire—every errant soul.  MacDonald had great distaste for the idea that God’s electing love is limited to some and denied to others and was at odds with his Calvinist upbringing throughout his life.

I’ve just returned from following in the footsteps of John Muir in California (and even flew last evening over Wisconsin within sight of his boyhood farm and the University of Wisconsin in Madison where he gained his higher education). As a part of my experience I have been reading Muir and more about Muir.  One thing that comes through clearly in Muir’s musings is that he believed in a Creator God whose love extended to all of nature—even nature “red in tooth and claw.”  He saw death as natural to all creatures and necessary to all creation, and nothing to be feared.  Another thing certain about John Muir is that he knew the words of the Bible far better than the great majority of Bible-believing Christians today—forced by the beatings of his father to memorize the New Testament and a great deal of the Old.  Perhaps it was the poetry of Psalm 104 and 145 that helped him keep his faith in a loving God in spite of the unjust punishment he received from his father.

Later in life Muir reflected on his father in a letter to a boyhood friend who also had a stern and abusive, but “Christian” father:

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.

Muir clearly remained in love with the Creator and with the creation.  But the question many ask is this: Was he a Christian?  If you do an Internet search of Muir along with that question, you will find that the query has been a common one.  My own conclusion is that if a person’s life and words are not obviously Christian, it is difficult to answer in the affirmative.  While we cannot answer that question with any certainty, I do like the conclusion make Paul J. Willis, English professor at Westmont College in his article on Muir that appears in the Christian History Magazine archives:

Do we, as Christians, need John Muir? I think we do. While we cannot follow him in regarding Nature itself as salvific, the passionate excesses of his thought and language and example are more than ever a necessary corrective to our suburban, mega-church separation from the wild. We are new creatures in Christ, but first and foremost we are creatures, in need of our fellow forest creatures and in need of all of God’s creation.

As to the extent and efficacy of God’s love expounded on by Muir, MacDonald, and Bell, I can only conclude with the first verse I remember having memorized (from the King James Version): “For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

O how I hope John Muir came to believe that.

Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together for joy;  let them sing before the LORD, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples with equity (Psalm 98:8-9)

For the past two days I have roamed Yosemite, from the Valley floor to Glacier Point, from its grand monoliths to its towering sequoias.  I tried to imagine John Muir discovering this grandeur for the first time—and tried to imagine it without the teeming masses of people, cars, and buses.  Fortunately the features here are so outrageously large and awesome that except when you are on the crowded roads, the visitors shrink to ant-like columns of which you are a tiny part: creating a double—and proper—humility.

Israel has few of such grand features, yet its musicians were led to pen psalms about what they saw and experienced from the hand of the Creator.  No wonder so many of John Muir’s writings sound like psalms.  Below I let Muir speak from his article on preserving national parks and forests.  I’ve added some of my photos to this celebration—knowing full well that Yosemite is one place where a photo can only hint at the grand realities that flood the senses:

Yosemite Park is a place of rest, a refuge from the roar and dust and weary, nervous, wasting work of the lowlands, in which one gains the advantages of both solitude and society. Nowhere will you find more company of a soothing peace-be- still kind. Your animal fellow-beings, so seldom regarded in civilization, and every rock-brow and mountain, stream, and lake, and every plant soon come to be regarded as brothers; even one learns to like the storms and clouds and tireless winds.
[Click on the photos to see them larger---keeping in mind that photos of Yosemite fail miserably to capture the awe it creates when you visit.]

As long as I live, I’ll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I’ll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I’ll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can.

Wander a whole summer if you can. Thousands of God’s blessings will search you and soak you as if you were a sponge, and the big days will go by uncounted. If you are business-tangled and so burdened by duty that only weeks can be got out of the heavy laden year, give a month at least. The time will not be taken from the sum of life. Instead of shortening, it will indefinitely lengthen it and make you truly immortal.

This one noble park is big enough and rich enough for a whole life of study and aesthetic enjoyment. It is good for everybody, no matter how benumbed with care, encrusted with a mail of business habits like a tree with bark. None can escape its charms. Its natural beauty cleans and warms like a fire, and you will be willing to stay forever in one place like a tree.

One day’s exposure to mountains is better than cartloads of books. See how willingly Nature poses herself upon photographers’ plates. No earthly chemicals are so sensitive as those of the human soul.

The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, prophets, able men whose thoughts and deeds have moved the world, have come down from the mountains—mountain dwellers who have grown strong there with the forest trees in Nature’s workshops.

Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts; and if people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish.

Today’s Ambling post is a photo collection from areas around the San Francisco Bay Area.  John Muir often had to visit here to conduct business, but he was never fond of the city—even without the urban sprawl, big bridges, and masses of automobiles.  As soon as this is posted, I will be in the car and heading for Yosemite and its masses of automobiles.  I’ll take my monolith photos and then head for the more remote regions.

You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.’ But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King (Matthew 5:33-35).

In today’s passage from the Sermon on the Mount Jesus reiterates the prophet Isaiah’s words (chapter 66).  I’m not a theologian, so I can’t tell you all the nuances of Jesus using these same words, and most of the commentaries I have read simply explain the main point of the message: just be honest and keep your word.  You do not need to make an oath on anything if you tell the truth and honor your promises.

That’s obviously a critical admonition for us all.  But in reference to the purpose of this Wonder of Creation site, something else really jumped out at me: As Isaiah states, the heavens and the earth—the entire cosmos—is the work of God’s “hands.”  And Jerusalem is as well.  Jerusalem was chosen by David (obviously through God’s direction), and it became the city of his throne built by human hands.  Psalm 48, written by “the sons of Korah,” used the same expression that Jesus used: it is “the city the Great King”—foretelling the time in the future when the New Jerusalem, made by God’s hands, descends to the earth and serves as “the throne of God and the Lamb” (Revelation 22:1).

A major point, then—and one the church seems to have often missed—is that the material heavens and earth and coming New Jerusalem are all of sacred significance.  Consider some meanings of “sacred” from Dictionary.com:  Sacred: 1. devoted or dedicated to a deity or to some religious purpose; consecrated. 2. entitled to veneration or religious respect by association with divinity or divine things; holy. 3. pertaining to or connected with religion (opposed to secular  or profane); 4. regarded with reverence; 5. secured against violation and infringement; 6. properly immune from violence, interference, etc.

John Muir left the formal church primarily because of his super-pious father, who knew the Scriptures backward and forward but was abusive and spiritually shallow.  But Muir kept his faith in God the Creator and perhaps sensed the sacred in the cosmos more than almost anyone else.  And it was primarily because of Muir that American political leaders had the foresight to preserve some of the nation’s most awe-inspiring wonders.  The great national parks indeed offer us the opportunity to discover  the sacred in God’s good creation, but even a nearby meadow, woodlot, pond, seashore beach, or marsh left to pretty much function naturally gives evidence of His eternal power and divine nature.

I close with a reverie of John Muir’s as a motivation for us to wonder even today in the glory of God’s “footstool”:

The forests seem kindly familiar, and the lands and meadows and glad singing streams.  I should like to dwell with them forever.  Here with bread and water I should be content.  Even if not allowed to roam and climb, tethered to a stake or tree in some meadow or grove, even then I should be content forever.  Bathed in such beauty, watching the expressions ever varying on the faces of the mountains, watching the stars, which here have a glory that the lowlander never dreams of, watching the circling seasons, listening to the songs of the waters and winds and birds would be endless pleasure.

And what glorious cloudlands I should see, storms and calms—a new heaven and a new earth every day, aye and new inhabitants.  And how many visitors I should have. I feel sure I should not have one dull moment.  And why should this appear so extravagant?  It is common sense, a sign of health—genuine, natural, all-awake health.  One would be at an endless Godful play, and what speeches and music and acting and scenery and lights!—sun, moon, stars, auroras.  Creation just beginning, the morning stars “still singing together and all the children of God shouting for joy.” [From My First Summer In the Sierra]

And it is with great joy that I look forward to visiting, after twenty years, Muir’s “backyard”: Yosemite National Park.  I may even shout!