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]

Earth theology. That phrase likely makes many conservative Christians uncomfortable.  It shouldn’t.  Whose earth is it anyway?  Does it belong to the New Agers?  Does it belong to the secular humanists?  To the pagans?  To the pantheists?  No it does not.  “The earth is the Lord’s”!

You’ll find that I’m writing with a bit more emotion today. Here’s why: I’ve been thinking lately about how I came to be involved in the creation-care movement while working for Mission India (which was then Bibles for India) in the mid-80s.  I was inspired in a negative sense by Shirley MacLaine, who was making headlines in the early 80’s with her New Age, Hinduistic preaching, book-writing, and film-making.  She and her pantheistic friends were so influential at that time that even the Sierra Club and Audubon Society were beginning to preach the same Eastern philosophical understandings.

These big conservation organizations felt they had to convince their constituents to love the creation spiritually in order to save the earth—and if the social trend was toward New Age spiritually, then they had to get on the bandwagon.  Out of that apparent mentality, the Sierra Club published the book Well Body, Well Earth: the Sierra Club Environmental Health Sourcebook, which gave readers, among other things, advice on transcendental meditation and praying to Gaia, the “spirit of the earth.”  It was full of New Age propaganda. And I was angry about that. But thank goodness, the Sierra Club finally came to its senses, in part because some Christians in the creation-care community helped to convince them that all they needed to do was give us good science, and let each religious tradition decide for themselves how it applied to their beliefs.

Please don’t get me wrong: I was not angry with Shirley MacLaine and the New Agers.  I grieve for them.  I’ve prayed for Shirley and others like her that they might be introduced to the Savior who is also their Creator.  They don’t know Him, and they are deceived.  That should concern all Christians and lead us to compassion for them.

But it should do even more.  It should compel us to inquire why we have failed to preach the good news about creation’s coming redemption.  It should make us wonder why non-Christians care about and for the earth more than we do.  It should bother us that neo-pagans and earth worshipers want to be in community with each other, want to be more humane toward animals, want to understand the spiritual aspects of human existence, want to live far less materialistically, want to live more simple lives, want to plant gardens, want to experience the wild outdoors, want to celebrate the mystery in the creation, and want to see the beauty in nature and be inspired by it to express themselves creatively in art, crafts, music, and literature. [Gaia image source]

What if these people, who are made in the image of God just as much as you and I, are closer in practice to the Kingdom than we are?  And what if we began to live more like they do and thought more about the spiritual meaning of the earth—and at the same time determined to share with them the good news about creation redeemed by the Cross and Resurrection?  What if we showed them from the Scriptures that all nature will be refreshed, restored, reunited, and reconciled to the one true God?  Is it possible that our preaching such a “well-earth gospel” might, in the power of the Holy Spirit, create another Great Awakening?

I believe it is a possibility.  But we can’t just wish it.  We have to start believing again that God cares for His earth—and then start showing those who don’t know Him that we care for suffering nature, not only because our Master made it and holds it all together, but also because we love these nature lovers.  Are they not our neighbors?

[Jesus as Creator and Sustainer image source]
[Oiled pelican rescue photo source]

I have to confess that I have a lot of anguish of soul over what I preach and how I live.  This is especially so in the area of living a creation-careful life.  Like everyone else alive in the US today, I’m a child of what could be called the Power Age of America.  I obtained my driver’s license in 1958, the era of “muscle cars.”  Though my first car was a gutless Studebaker, a hand-me-down oil burner we called the “Purple Turtle,” my college car was a huge De Soto Firedome with a massive V8 engine. [Car photo source]

Driving over-powered cars everywhere; horribly inefficient furnaces pumping out enough heat to keep our Michigan homes at 70 degrees all winter long; air conditioning to keep cars, homes, offices, and stores at 70 degrees all summer long; Florida orange juice every morning; chicken from North Carolina three times a week; beef from Colorado a few times more each week, lots of tomato soup from California; cereal from nearby Battle Creek made from corn, oats, and wheat from who knows where.  Hot, glowing TV sets burning for hours a day.  Those are the comforts and conveniences I became accustomed to—and virtually all of us believe we are now entitled to.  And it’s all come at a price—to God’s good creation and to our physical, emotional, and spiritual life. [Tomatoes photo source]

Sure, we’ve changed our ways—some.  But not nearly enough.  Same with our children and grandchildren.  We still love our power gadgets, our creature comforts, our conveniences.  And some of us feel guilty about it—but do precious little to make the major lifestyle changes that will really change us and help us to make the difference we’d like to make. [Stove photo source]

So I daydream about bailing out of the whole power structure and living with the family on some sustainable farm where the grandkids—actually all of us—will not have time for much TV or toys because we are doing “the chores.”  But how do you actually make something like that happen?  That’s my struggle.

KEY SCRIPTURE:
Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture? Must you also trample the rest of your pasture with your feet? Is it not enough for you to drink clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet? (Ezekiel 34:18)

So I’m watching several people these days and seeking to gain motivation, inspiration, and insight from them: My nephew Vaughn and his family doing homeschooling and living on a sort of mini-farm in Texas, the former emergency room doctor Matthew Sleeth and his family who gave up the up-scale life for a more creation-sustainable life, and Joel Salatin, owner with his family of the creation-careful Polyface Farm in Virginia.  These are all followers of Christ who have many of the same beliefs and convictions that I have, but are actually doing a lot more to live out those beliefs and convictions.   [Joel Salatin photo source]

[Joel Salatin will appear at Calvin College's January Series on Tuesday, January 17, from 12:30 to 1:30.]

Do you want to learn and consider with me?  Take a look at some of these links and surf around from each of these spots:

A story that includes Joel Salatin from Christianity Today.  Here
Joel’s Polyface Farm: Here
A YouTube movie about Joel: Here
Dr. Matthew Sleeth’s story: Here
Dr. Susan Emmerich’s story and documentary: Here

One mid-summer morning in the early fifties my mom said to my siblings and me, “If I get everything done in good time today, I’ll take you kids to the lake to go swimming.” Our being too young to drive and a good swimming lake too far away to walk to, we simply had to wait on Mom and hope that she got everything done. As the day passed from the cool of the morning to the heat of mid-afternoon, our hope started to dwindle. Hope disappeared first in my two older brothers. They decided to go swimming in the gravel pit near our home, which by that time of the year had become mostly a lukewarm mudhole. The only expression of hope remaining was their swimsuits left waiting in their bedroom. [Swimming hole image source]

Norman Rockwell illustration

Those facts combined led to a Norman Rockwell moment. Mom finally got everything done late in the afternoon. When she made the long-hoped-for announcement, the older boys could not be found. I was the only one who knew where they were and informed Mom of the fact.  She was disturbed by their lack of patience, but decided to show them grace anyway (her name, in fact, was Grace). So she piled me and my next-door buddy and his two sisters into the car and drove off toward the gravel pit to get my brothers. Fortunately the pit was about fifty yards from the road, and even more fortunately I was the first to appear at the rim of the pit. I yelled out the good news to Dick and Jim just before Patty and Sharon reached my standpoint. Curiously, the boys stayed up to their necks in the brown water. After some more yelling that made me aware of the fact that their clothes were piled on the far bank, I realized that they were skinny-dipping!

Order and modesty were soon restored and the long-hoped-for excursion to the lake was realized. My brothers’ red cheeks of embarrassment were replaced by the redness caused by the fresh, deep, and cool waters of Lake Algonquin.

That incident adds clarity to this great Scripture passage on hope:

KEY SCRIPTURE:
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently (Romans 8:22-25).

The patience of children is notoriously short, but the hope spoken of in this Scripture has been a very long hope—one, in fact, that goes all the way back to the Fall. I heard the groaning (and complaining) of my brothers as they waited impatiently for the trip to the lake—and saw their eventual settling for a mudhole. In The Weight of Glory, C. S. Lewis said, “If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord​ finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” [Mud pie making image source]

We need to hold on to the hope we have been given in God’s Word. God will bring this blessed hope to a glorious fulfillment. And does it not make us joyful that “the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels” includes hope for “the whole creation”? As we begin the year 2012, let’s consider actively following the advice offered by Francis Schaeffer forty years ago by relieving some of nature’s groaning:

What we should have, individually and corporately, is a situation where, on the basis of the work of Christ, Christianity is not just seen as “pie in the sky,” but something that has in it the possibility of substantial healings now in every area where there are divisions because of the Fall. First of all, my division from God is healed by justification. . . . Second, there is the psychological division of man from himself; third, the sociological divisions of man from other men; and last, the division of man from nature, and nature from nature. In all these areas we should expect to see substantial healing. . . . On the basis of the fact that there is going to be total redemption in the future, not only of man, but of all creation, the Christian who believes the Bible should be the man who—with God’s help and in the power of the Holy Spirit—is treating nature now in the direction of the way nature will be then. It will not now be perfect, but it must be substantial, or we have missed our calling. [Pollution and the Death of Man, pp. 68-69; Tyndale House Publishers, 1972]  [Francis Schaeffer image source]

I was thinking this past week of Christmas as a child in the late 40s and early 50s. In particular I recalled having received a new sled and the day after Christmas having left it behind a car in our neighbor’s driveway. Dragging the crushed sled home in tears, I feared the wrath of my father—a fear enhanced by my mother’s “Just wait until your father gets home!”  I immediately “hid” myself under the covers of my sister’s bed.  Soon I heard Dad come in, heard some conversation in the kitchen, and heard heavy male footsteps on the stairs, down the hall into my bedroom, and then into my supposed sanctuary.  But my wise and godly father gave me mercy instead of wrath.  How relieved I was to be able to cry at his chest, and not receive a spanking.

Family and friends remember Dad for almost all good reasons, but one physical feature they all recall was his big hands. Once when we were eating in a restaurant, a waitress stopped and commented, “Goodness, are those your hands? For a second there I thought you had your feet on the table!” And with that rude remark, she hustled off to the kitchen, leaving Dad in embarrassed silence.

It seems like everyone noticed his large hands. Years after his death, a friend would sometimes say, “My, your dad sure had big hands. Whenever he shook my hand, it almost got lost in his big mitt!” The remarks of friends and relatives, however, were not unkind; they arose naturally out of their memories of a man with a heart as big as his hands.

Henry was born into a family of eight children on a small farm in West Michigan in 1902. And it was the farm that was to shape his life—and his hands. Milking cows, wielding the ax, steering the cultivator, and reining horses helped to develop his stocky frame and broaden the girth of his growing hands. Formal schooling ended for him after eighth grade. The demands of the farm in the years of World War I meant that school could not continue: Americans needed to feed England and France. Dad did not marry until age 28, and I, the youngest of four, did not enter the family until he was forty. But soon those big hands were to have a profound impact on my life. With memory’s eye, I can still see Elsie Egermeier’s Bible Story Book cradled in those hands as he read to us after each evening meal. Even now when I read of Noah, Moses, David, or Jonah, I am transported back to those warm and secure times right after World War II.

We kids used to chuckle when Dad’s big, callused fingers struggled with the wispy, thin pages of his Scofield Study Bible. His Bibles wore out rather quickly, but not merely because of his hands: they were tattered by constant use. Along with his giant hands, he had a giant faith. The Bible was his guide in his worship, in his love for Mom, in his concern for others, in his generosity, and in his philosophy of child-rearing and discipline. Dad did not use a belt or a brush or any other implement when it was necessary to apply a little corporal punishment. He used those big hands—hard enough to smart, but never injure.

Many child psychologists, with some justification, claim that parents should not use their hands to spank—for fear that a child might become terrified of their hands. Instead, they claim, some neutral object like a wooden spoon should stand as the symbol of punishment. Then the child will mostly fear the object and not the parent. Perhaps this is true in some instances, but since my father was just as quick to use those hands to pick me up, place me on his lap, and embrace me with arms of love and forgiveness, I never cringed in their presence.

Those wonderful big hands, however, did teach me some valuable lessons about God: He is a God of love and mercy, but He is also my heavenly Father who must chasten me when I disobey, push me when I need help getting started, point the way when I need direction, lift me when I must get over the rough spots, stop me when I go astray, and clasp me in love’s embrace when sorrow comes. That’s what I can expect from the hands of God. No follower of Christ needs to fear the big hands of a just but merciful heavenly Father.

My regret is that only one of our three sons knew Dad long enough to remember Bappa’s big hands. To him those hands were the fascinating extensions of a loving heart reflected through twinkling eyes and a broad smile.

When he died at age 73, it was only fitting that Mom should lean over Dad’s casket, touch those hands, and echo the words of Catherine Marshall, “Good night, sweetheart, I’ll see you in the morning.”

I don’t know what Henry Ohlman’s heavenly body will look like, but I hope God will allow him to keep those wonderful, big hands!

KEY SCRIPTURE:
“Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you” (Exodus 20:12).