If you’re like me, you’re captivated by economic, political, social, theological issues. I like to contemplate the discovery of grand plans and heroic actions that will save the world, the economy, the society, the church. Whenever my mind goes off into the ether of supposed all-encompassing solutions to global or national crises, I find that it’s important to be brought back to the earth—the earth, in fact, in my own backyard. ["Roadmap" image source]

Wendell Berry is just the right guy to knock me off my high horse, which he does so aptly in his classic essay “The Gift of Good Land.” In the essay Berry takes a number of cues from John Milton’s Paradise Lost. These lines are the key lines:

[How] apt the mind or fancy is to rove
Unchecked, and of her roving is no end;
Till warned, or by experience taught, she learn
That not to know at large of things remote
From use, obscure and subtle, but to know
That which before us lies in daily life,
Is the prime Wisdom.

Berry elaborates on the uselessness of knowing “at large of things remote from use, obscure, and subtle” in reference to world hunger:

As is characteristic of industrial heroism, the professed intention here is entirely salutary: nobody should starve. The trouble is that “world hunger” is not a problem that can be solved by a “world solution.” Except in a very limited sense, it is not an industrial problem, and industrial attempts to solve it—such as the “Green Revolution” and “Food for Peace”—have often had grotesque and destructive results. “The problem of world hunger” cannot be solved until it is understood and dealt with by local people as a multitude of local problems of ecology, agriculture, and culture.

He reminds us that the local, daily acts of skillful stewardship and self-restraint are the solution to global problems:

The great study of stewardship, then, is “to know/That which before us lies in daily life” and to talk about skill. In the loss of skill we lose stewardship; in losing stewardship we lose fellowship; we become outcasts from the great neighborhood of Creation. It is possible—as our experience in this good land shows—to exile ourselves from Creation, and to ally ourselves with the principle of destruction. . . . And once we have allied ourselves with that principle, we are foolish to think that we can control the results. The “regulation” of abominations is a modern governmental exercise that never succeeds. If we are willing to pollute the air—to harm the elegant creature known as the atmosphere—by that token we are willing to harm all creatures that breathe, ourselves and our children among them. There is no begging off or “trading off.” You cannot affirm the power plant and condemn the smokestack, or affirm the smoke and condemn the cough.

That is not to suggest that we can live harmlessly, or strictly at our own expense; we depend upon other creatures and survive by their deaths. To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration. In such desecration we condemn ourselves to spiritual and moral loneliness, and others to want. [Bread making image source]

This seems to suggest that there’s a lot more meant by the beginning of “The Lord’s Prayer”:

KEY SCRIPTURE:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread (Matthew 6:9-11).

My prayer: “Lord, make me more skillful in attending well to the daily things.”

Let me share a delight with you: I’m reading Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize novel Gilead. The novel is written as a memoire of an aging pastor to his seven-year-old son (offspring of a late second marriage—his first wife having died in childbirth). The Pastor, John Ames, has been diagnosed with a heart disease that could take his life at any moment; so he wants to give his young son some of his history and his life lessons from years in the ministry.

The book is a celebration of earthly existence with all its delights and mysteries—and even its sorrows, sorrows seasoned with grace, bathed in prayer, and lightened by the hope of heaven. Woven with humor and regret, guilt and goodness, it should touch the soul of every follower of Christ. One incident that Reverend John recalls is a moment in childhood when he and his best buddy (who also became a minister) baptized a new litter of barn cats. His description of using the Congregational form of baptism by “sprinkling” has to make you chuckle—as well as his comment about his friend who thought they should have been totally immersed: “Those cats should have been grateful I was not [a Baptist].”

When he tells his minister father what he did, he gets a reprimand: “The Sacraments must always be treated and regarded with the greatest respect.” John goes on:

We did respect the Sacraments, but we thought the whole world of those cats. I got his meaning, though, and I did no more baptizing until I was ordained. . . . I still remember how those warm little brows felt under the palm of my hand. Everyone has petted a cat, but to touch one like that, with the pure intention of blessing it, is a very different thing. It stays in your mind. For years we would ponder what, from a cosmic viewpoint, we had done to them. It still seems to be a real question. There is a reality in blessing, which I take baptism to be, primarily. It doesn’t enhance sacredness, but it acknowledges it, and there is a power in that. I have felt it pass through me, so to speak. The sensation is of really knowing a creature. I mean really feeling its mysterious life and your mysterious life at the same time. [Kitten image source]

John continues with some thoughts about water in the rite of baptism by quoting Ludwig Feuerbach, a famous atheist who nonetheless had a respect for many of the joyful aspects of religion:

Water is the purest, clearest of liquids in virtue of this: its natural character is the image of the spotless nature of the Divine Spirit. In short, water has a significance in itself, as water; it is on account of its natural quality that it is consecrated and selected as the vehicle of the Holy Spirit. So far there lies at the foundation of Baptism a beautiful, profound natural significance.”

KEY SCRIPTURE:
The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders; where morning dawns, where evening fades, you call forth songs of joy (Psalm 65:8).

This website is in large part a similar celebration of the sacred intertwined with material.  RBC’s Discovery Series includes five booklets on celebrating God’s natural handiwork: the broad celebration of the wonder of creation plus specific elements of creation: water, trees, soil, and wilderness. You can actually read these booklets online at this link, and you can obtain print copies of them to share with others or even to tuck into a backpack for trail side devotions.

It was in preparation for this post that I first saw the amazing parallel between Psalm 148:1-6, 11-13 and  Revelation 5:5:11-13.  Each passage offers hymns of praise to the Creator—the Psalm written almost a thousand years before the first coming of Messiah and the Revelation envisioning a celebration in heaven as Messiah (“the Lamb who was slain”) is honored before His coming back to earth to reign forever as Lord of the universe.

KEY SCRIPTURE:
Praise the LORD from the heavens, praise Him in the heights above. Praise Him, all his angels, praise Him, all His heavenly hosts. Praise Him, sun and moon, praise Him, all you shining stars. Praise Him, you highest heavens and you waters above the skies. Let them praise the name of the LORD, for He commanded and they were created. He set them in place for ever and ever; He gave a decree that will never pass away.

Praise the LORD from the earth, you great sea creatures and all ocean depths, lightning and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds that do his bidding, you mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals and all cattle, small creatures and flying birds, kings of the earth and all nations, you princes and all rulers on earth, young men and maidens, old men and children.

Let them praise the name of the LORD, for His name alone is exalted; His splendor is above the earth and the heavens (Psalm 148:1-6, 11-13).

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!” (Revelation 5:11-13)

Each passage also has a simple two-part structure:  First the beings of heaven (who have always been intimate with the Creator/Savior) offer up their praise.  Then the creatures of earth—elements, animals, and people (who have often spurned intimacy with their Creator/Savior)—offer their praise.  Central to it all is the recognition that the Lord is above both heaven and earth.

But how do the cosmic elements and animals praise their Creator?  Theological tradition says they do it by carrying out their God-given functions within the creation.  That’s probably true; but is that all the truth?  In the Revelation passage we see more than mere utility in the non-human creation.  There we see content and some level of consciousness in nature.  By all appearances, all things created have within their different natures some capacity to respond to their Creator.  This was also alluded to by the apostle Paul: “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” (Romans 8:19-21).

There is expectation and hope in the non-human creation, expectation and hope tied directly to people—those who were made to be creation’s stewards, guardians, rulers, and keepers.  Forty years ago, Francis Schaeffer encouraged us to be involved in a “substantial healing” of all the rifts created by the Fall—including the rift between people and nature.  How have we been doing?

For those who are familiar with The Chronicles of Narnia and The Cosmic Trilogy, it does not come as a surprise to understand that Scripture in many ways hints at the reality behind these works of fiction so artfully crafted by C. S. Lewis (and more complexly by Tolkein): the evil and the good of human behavior are tied directly to the state and temporary fate of the creation.  Creation’s ultimate fate, however, awaits the coming again of Messiah, who will ensure that justice once again reigns on earth—justice not only for those people have given themselves faithfully to the cause of love, goodness, and stewardship through the power of the Holy Spirit and have accepted the atoning sacrifice of the “Lamb who was slain,” but justice for all His creatures who have suffered at the hand of those who have not been given to love, goodness, and faithful stewardship.

Take courage, His people.  Take courage, His suffering creatures.  As the excited hosts of heaven already know, justice and reconciliation is on the way!  (Colossians 1:20)

[You may want to read a PDF article on this website related to this devotional: The Lion, the Curse, and the Evangelical.]

I have a theory about the curse in Genesis.  Here’s the passage:

KEY SCRIPTURE:
To Adam [the Creator] said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return” (Genesis 3:17-19).

Think it through with me as I try to squeeze a lot of theology, philosophy, and sociology into a short space. One of the most significant aspects of man’s fall into sin was our Creator’s curse. Because we know that God works out all things for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose, and because we know He loves the creature made in His image, we can believe this curse had an ultimately beneficial purpose and was an act of tough love.

It is pretty obvious that while the curse made a great impact on the natural order, nature itself did not sin. Man is fallen, not nature. Nature is cursed, but it is cursed to discipline sinful man.  God sent him out of the Garden where the living was easy and life perpetual into the wider world which would now resist his efforts to wrest it to his own glory, selfishly hoard it, and destroy its fruitfulness. Sinful, self-centered man having perpetual life and easy access to all the fruit of the earth was a disaster in the making; so God did two other things to protect His creation from the evil of sinful man: He closed the Garden and prevented re-entry with His armed angelic host, and He took away our access to the tree of life: daily sustenance that would give mankind unending life (and which, praise God, we will once again have access to according to the last chapter of the Bible) .

Here’s my theory: God said we will make our living by hard labor being reminded of our sin by facing a natural world that would in many ways be hostile to us; and we said “No way.” So immediately we put our creative powers to work to make “labor-saving” and “time saving” devices. The rest is history, as they say.

We have saved so much labor by our cleverness that we’re now destroying the earth with it:  Creating chemicals that are a lethal influence in our environment; burning fossil fuels to run our powerful engines each doing the work of hundreds or thousands of people and fouling our air, fishing out our oceans, and wiping out our forests; creating huge machines that do the “gardening” for us and turning them over to irresponsible corporations motivated primarily by monetary profit, while we cocoon ourselves in our cities with purblind eyes that do not bother to see what is happening to our soil; making appliances that keep families out of the kitchen and keep us from working side by side with those we love to make our meals and wash our dishes. We leave these wonderful kitchens, where family life was once centered, and take our children to restaurant chains the purpose of which is to make money for stock holders and which waste millions of pounds of food and paper every day (not to mention the growing evidence that most of that food is not good food).

And what have we done with the labor and time saved? Where to find clues: Facebook, sports, entertainment, TV, video gaming, perpetual travel, shopping temples, and . . . .

I’m going to leave that there for now—just to keep your mental gears in motion. I’d love to have many readers of WOC take up this idea and start a good discussion on this post in the comments box. Do you think that we have become a fat and loveless culture in part because we have spurned the love of our Creator, who was wise enough to know that our avaricious nature needed the discipline of the curse that we have worked so hard to overturn?

Few people fail to be touched by a stunning photo of natural beauty or a gripping verbal description of natural events.  But that’s not enough for our souls.  To allow creation’s meaning to touch us deeply, we must experience it. Wild nature highlights our finitude, vulnerability, and our utter and complete dependence upon the creating and sustaining power of God. He becomes large; we become small.  In places where we more or less “run the show,” that order is reversed.  We are often creatures with swollen heads and shrunken hearts.

John Calvin called the natural world the “theater of God’s glory,” but it is even more than a theater; it’s a cathedral.  And awareness of the sacredness of God’s handiwork occurs only when we enter it with the right spirit.  The word “cathedral” comes from the Latin term for “chair”: cathedra.  Traditionally a cathedral is the sacred place where a church bishop has his chair of authority—his throne.  While human church leaders should have always kept us mindful of our stewardship role in the created order, too often the trappings, traditions, and troubles of men hinder our capacity to hear the “still, small voice” of God in our church buildings.

For that reason, it’s important for us to preserve and treasure the cathedral of the wild where we see that God, the ultimate authority, is clearly on the throne and where His wordless revelation can still be clearly seen and understood (Romans 1:20).  When truly attentive people enter the wild, they immediately recognize the signs that this is holy ground—a place where to them a flaming autumn maple is no less evidence of God’s miracle-working power and presence than the burning bush was to Moses.

Also important is for us to recognize that in the wilderness sanctuary we’re not alone in the impulse to worship.  God’s other creatures worship there as well.  As the prophets Isaiah and David remind us, all created things in their own nature respond to God—even trees, rivers, and mountains. (Isa. 55:12; Psa. 98:8)  This amazing truth from the Old Testament is echoed in the Revelation where all God’s creatures are seen as worshiping the One who died in order that the cosmos may be redeemed: “Every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, I heard saying: ‘Blessing and honor and glory and power be to Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb [Jesus Christ], forever and ever!’” (Rev. 5:13)

Let this wonderful hymn, penned by the psalmist some three thousand years ago, resound in your heart whenever you worship in creation’s cathedral:

KEY SCRIPTURE:
Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise Him in the heights! Praise Him, all His angels; praise Him, all His hosts! Praise Him, sun and moon; praise Him, all you stars of light! Praise Him, you heavens of heavens, and you waters above the heavens! Let them praise the name of the Lord, for He commanded and they were created. He also established them forever and ever; He made a decree which shall not pass away. Praise the Lord from the earth, you great sea creatures and all the depths; fire and hail, snow and clouds; stormy wind, fulfilling His word; mountains and all hills; fruitful trees and all cedars; beasts and all cattle; creeping things and flying fowl; kings of the earth and all peoples; princes and all judges of the earth; both young men and maidens; old men and children. Let them praise the name of the Lord, for His name alone is exalted; His glory is above the earth and heaven (Psalm 148:1-13).

 [Photos from Wikimedia Commons]