I’ve enjoyed outdoor hobbies for as long as I can remember, and apparently even longer. (My first camping trip was at a mere 3 weeks old.) Some of my earliest memories are of exploring the “woods” next to our home in Clarksville, Michigan, with my brothers. Many of those experiences are as clear in my mind now as the moment they happened, and the memories bring with them the same emotion that accompanied the original experience.

It’s strange, the types of responses that our experiences in the outdoors can elicit. I can’t think of a single emotion I haven’t experienced in the outdoors. I’ve felt awe and fear and everything between. Oddly, I have never gazed at a sunrise or a sunset (or a mountain or the plains); seen the power, skill, and beauty of a wild animal; or thought about the delicate balance we know exists in every ecosystem, and concluded, “There must be a God who created all this.” The analogies are old and well-worn: the watch and watchmaker, the painting and the painter. If something is (particularly something complex), there must be someone who made it. But like I said, I have never thought that about the world around me.

Before you quit reading and write me off as a scientific naturalist, let me clarify. Psalm 19 and Romans 1, among other passages, assert that creation provides evidence that God exists. I’m not saying that creation doesn’t prove a creator; I believe with all my heart and mind that it does. I am merely saying that, for me, the existence of a creator has never been concluded, deductively or inductively, from the evidence of creation. God’s existence and role as Creator has never been in doubt; for me, it’s a foregone conclusion. I don’t wake up every morning and wait for evidence that there is air. I don’t even take a test breath, I just breathe. Air’s presence is a foregone conclusion.

What creation does is show me, as Romans says, much of what God is like. I don’t expect or require creation to convince me that God is. It reveals Who He is and what He is like. Those times, when my knowledge of God deepens because of what He has made, are the times that elicit the proper response from me—worship.

Creation speaks of the Creator. Are you listening? When you are faced with the grandeur, power, and beauty of creation, does your vision linger there or do you follow the sign to the object? Are you nearsighted, focusing solely on the beauty in front of you instead of on the God behind the beauty? And when you do see Him, how do you respond?

Consider Psalm 104: After writing 32 verses celebrating the work of our Creator, the psalmist gives us his response:

KEY SCRIPTURE:
I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. May my meditation be sweet to Him; I will be glad in the Lord.  (Psalm 104:33-34).

 Post by J.R. Hudberg

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]

When I started working as director of communication for Mission India in 1982, it was felt that for my writing I needed to experience India as soon as possible; so by mid-autumn that year, I found myself in that fascinating land for two weeks.  I know it’s a cliché to say the trip was “life-changing,” but that’s the best way to describe it.  It was an adventure from beginning to end, and since I was also the photographer/videographer, what I saw and experienced is vivid in my memory.

Being the cameraman, I sat in the front of the bus with the driver and got to ask him all sorts of questions: Q: “Why do taxis have lemons hanging  from their front bumpers and shoes hanging from rear bumpers?”  A: “Those are religious symbols for good luck.”  Q: “Why are there swastikas on vendor carts and booths?”  A: “It’s an old Sanskrit symbol asking the gods for financial success.”  So the questioning went—for the whole trip.  And our Sikh driver seemed to enjoy educating me on the religious significance of everything we saw.

When we got to the city of Agra, of Taj Mahal fame, and were approaching the famous structure, I saw that several hawking vendors had spray-painted their donkeys: crimson, purple, lime green, fuchsia—a whole palette of eye-catching neon colors.  So, of course, I had to ask him what the religious significance was of that. A: “It’s not religious; what a man loves he decorates.”

“What a man loves he decorates”!  It struck me then and strikes me now that such would be an awesome theme for a coffee-table book.  And from that time on during our trip, my eyes kept catching loved things made lovely: children in the churches we visited dressed in beautiful, frilly, white dresses, wives and mothers in stunning silk saris (some even with gold thread), trucks with gaudy designs and Christmas-like ornaments strung from front to back, multi-colored chalk designs artfully sifted into intricate patterns on newly swept, hard-packed dirt in front of primitive homes and temples, and the very icon of India: the breathtaking Taj Mahal—perhaps the world’s best-known, most lavishly decorated monument to love.

The bus driver’s comment explained a lot of things I saw in India—and lots of things I see in creation.  In the last post I commented on how the Bible tells us that the creation fresh from the hand of God was not only good, but also pleasing to the eye: it was beautiful.  In so many ways it remains beautiful.  Every time you see a beautiful butterfly, a bird with stunning plumage (or even a sparrow), a regal tree, a blazing sunrise, a spectacular mountain range, flaming flowers, towering clouds illuminated by raw electricity, or a newborn baby with “skin so soft,” remember also that what our Creator loves He decorates.

KEY SCRIPTURE:
LORD is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made. All your works praise you, LORD; your faithful people extol you. They tell of the glory of your kingdom and speak of your might (Psalm 145:9-11).

At the age of 37 I entered a three-year “dark night of the soul” called mid-life crisis.  No, I didn’t buy a red sports car, abandon my family, and become a beach bum.  Mostly I cried a lot.  Sometimes at night I would go outside, look up at the stars, and ask, “God, where are you?” and weep again because the heavens were brass.  One day I fell crying into my wife’s lap—telling her that I needed God to step out of heaven and tell me that everything will be all right.  Her answer was Spirit-inspired: “God is not going to step out of heaven and tell you that, but I’m here and I’m telling you that everything is going to be all right!”  Marge and my friends became the voice and heart of Jesus during that bleak time.  They took my hand and carried the Light for me throughout the night until morning came again.

Among the many lessons I learned at that time is when your soul is in anguish, the wonder of creation loses its capacity to create joy.  I even wrote a psalm about it—my mid-life crisis psalm.  The sum of my psalm was that I bewailed the loss of joy in my vocation as a Christian school administrator, in my wife and children, and in the natural world.  Living in Northern California at the time, I had access to some of the world’s most amazing natural wonders: Big Sur, the redwood forest, the Sierra Nevada, Point Reyes, and typically awe-inspiring Yosemite.  Yet they became incapable of giving me joy.  I was heartsick and only God and His people could heal me—which they eventually did.  And I learned the lesson that C. S. Lewis taught in Screwtape Letters:

Sooner or later [God] withdraws, if not in fact, at least from [the believer’s] conscious experience, all. . . supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. [Chapter 8]

The creation by itself never satisfies the soul—a fact learned when one is heartsick.  It’s the existence, love, and care of our Creator/Savior and His people that makes joy in anything possible.  If the soul of someone in your sphere of influence is struggling in the night, stay with them and carry the Light; and keep reminding them that joy—and growth—will come again with the morning.

KEY SCRIPTURE:
His anger is but for a moment, and His favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning. Psalm 30:5

 [This is a repost from January 2010 with photos I took in Yosemite this past summer.  God gave me back my joy!]

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]