The day I saw my physician’s assistant was an awesome Indian Summer day. While sitting in the examination room, I took the liberty of lifting the closed blinds to look down into the blazing branches of a sugar maple that had a height exceeding that of the three-floor clinic. Almost immediately I saw a couple tiny kinglets really busy combing the branches for bugs (I could not see the male close-up so don’t know if they were golden-crowned or ruby crowned). Again I wondered just how much such creatures of God are regaled by the creation’s beauty.  I know they were looking for food, but were they also being delighted by the glory of the day—reveling in the freedom of being able to do the work God gave them to do?  Somehow I think they were, my believing that all created things in their own nature respond to their Creator.

KEY SCRIPTURE:
Praise the Lord from the earth, you creatures of the ocean depths, fire and hail, snow and clouds, wind and weather that obey him, mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals and all livestock, small scurrying animals and birds, kings of the earth and all people, rulers and judges of the earth, young men and young women, old men and children. Let them all praise the name of the Lord. For his name is very great; his glory towers over the earth and heaven! (Psalm 148:7-13).

Musing thus, I was almost irritated that the PA didn’t make me wait more than ten minutes! When she came in, she noted that I was actually using the windows for their real purpose—looking outside. So we got to talking about the outdoors, and I told her about my work at RBC Ministries as a nature writer and about our aim to help parents and grandparents get the kids outdoors. Having five kids in her blended family, she commented on how hard it was to get them away from the TV and toys. “But,” she, said, “I’m the family outdoor Nazi. When I’m home they go out!” “Good for you,” I remarked.

I believe it’s a good goal to work at having our kids or grandkids experience the outdoors almost every day of the year. The weather outside may even be “frightful” but the kids can find it delightful. “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night” stays these parents and caregivers from getting their kids outdoors at least once each day! That doesn’t mean just running them from the house to the car. It means getting out and deliberately examining what’s happening in the creation. It’s important to make our children or grandchildren aware of what’s going on in the natural world every day: windy or calm, sunny or cloudy, wet or dry, hot or cold, humid or arid, where the sun and moon are, what the birds are doing, what the natural sounds and scents are. Be bold, dress the kids appropriately, and go out and experience rain, fog, snow—even blizzard-force winds (dressed for it and close to safety, of course). Sometimes in the winter, I get my warmest gear on and go sit outside in a powerful snowstorm for as long as I can take it just to feel its power and awesome glory. John Muir did this in a Sierra windstorm—trying to get the feel for what a tree experiences in a windstorm:

From a sketch by John Muir

 After cautiously casting about, I made choice of the tallest of a group of Douglas [firs] that were growing close together like a tuft of grass, no one of which seemed likely to fall unless all the rest fell with it. Though comparatively young, they were about 100 feet high, and their lithe, brushy tops were rocking and swirling in wild ecstasy. Being accustomed to climb trees in making botanical studies, I experienced no difficulty in reaching the top of this one, and never before did I enjoy so noble an exhilaration of motion. The slender tops fairly flapped and swished in the passionate torrent, bending and swirling backward and forward, round and round, tracing indescribable combinations of vertical and horizontal curves, while I clung with muscles firm braced, like a bobolink on a reed.

In its widest sweeps my tree-top described an arc of from twenty to thirty degrees, but I felt sure of its elastic temper, having seen others of the same species still more severely tried—bent almost to the ground indeed, in heavy snows—without breaking a fiber. I was therefore safe, and free to take the wind into my pulses and enjoy the excited forest from my superb outlook.

Our “Wonder Kids” page is dedicated to helping parents, grandparents, and other child care-givers ideas, links, and inspiration to get the kids outdoors.  Also in the right sidebar you will find these links to material for children: Last Child in the Woods, National Wildlife Federation Site for Kids, Children and Nature Network. Check these out; then get out there with the kids.  If there are no children in your home, go out there yourself and be a kid again!

Fall is the ideal time to teach children about nature—and about nature’s Creator. While Christian schools can be straight-forward about referencing the Creator, most secular schools cannot. Home-schoolers, parents, grandparents, and other care givers might want to use the following list of biblical truths as a guide to some good outdoor teaching this fall—maybe starting today!

What to Teach Children About Nature:

1. It was created by God. (Gen. 1-2; John 1:3; Col. 1:16-17)
2. It is owned by God. (Psa. 24:1; 1 Cor. 10:16, Psa. 104:24)
3. It is loved by God. (Psa 145:17 NIV; Psa. 36:5)
4. It is sustained by God continuously. (Gen. 8:22; Psa. 145:17;
     Psa. 104, Psa. 36:5-6; Matt. 6:26; Col. 1:17)
5. It was placed under man’s dominion.
     (Gen. 1:28; Psa. 8:6-8, Heb. 2:8, Psa. 145:13)
6. It was assigned to man for care and servant leadership.
     (Gen. 2:15)
7. It was altered by sin at the Fall. (Gen. 3:14-19)
8. It was altered again by the Flood. (Gen. 8-9)
9. It provides needs for all people throughout time.
    (Psa. 104:13-15; Matt 6:25-24; Zech. 10:1)
10. It is considered less valuable than people. (Matt. 6:26)
11. It has been redeemed by Christ. (Rom. 8:18-23;
     Col. 1:20)
12. It will be restored, reconciled to God, and unified at
     Christ’s return. (Isa. 11:6-9; Rom. 8:18-23; Col. 1:20;
     Eph. 1:9-10)
13. Its destiny will be determined by God, not man.
     (2 Pet. 3:10; Rev. 21:1)

What are some implications of these biblical truths?

We do not own the earth and can never ultimately “possess” any part of it. When we buy and sell land, we are only assigning temporary care to “owners” who are expected by God to use it carefully, frugally, and justly for His glory. We should not deliberately destroy the land’s capacity to do its Creator-assigned work: to produce needed elements (fruit, oxygen, water filtration, moisture, etc.) for the health and survival of all that depend upon it. Our task is stewardship, which acknowledges that we are accountable to the Master for the creation’s health.  We are to partake of its fruit without destroying its fruitfulness.

Since it was made by God, is sustained by God, is loved by God, and will be restored by God, we must use  His good earth with reverent care and respect. We should be thankful for our parents and their parents for their care of it and be careful to hand it on to our children and their children as little damaged and diminished as we can.

People are expected to establish communities and cultures upon the earth that use the land and its produce with as little waste and destruction as possible. All creatures are made by God and should be respected as His creation. When we use the earth’s produce, we do it with gratitude and with the understanding that all His creatures, beginning with—but not limited to—mankind, have a right to occupy and make use of their allotted portion of it. As much as possible we should attempt to treat the earth now as we will be expected to treat it at its restoration in the coming Kingdom.

While “our citizenship is in heaven,” we cannot forget, as T.S. Eliot reminds us, that such citizenship “is our model and type for our citizenship below.” Children need to know that the earth we see now is not like it was at the creation (because of the Fall, the Curse, the Flood, the ravages of time, and abuse by mankind), and it is not now what it will be at the restoration (the “peaceable kingdom” of shalom). Nonetheless, we also must show them how it still demonstrates to us the power, divinity, and awesome creative nature of God. For that reason alone, we should tend faithfully to our stewardship tasks.

I like to motivate children to think of their use of the earth as a creative school project that will be graded by the divine Teacher at the end. And if children offer up their creative work as art to the Heavenly Father, they can know that regardless of how imperfect and simple it is, He will post it on His fridge!

I will exalt you, my God the King; I will praise your name for ever and ever.  Every day I will praise you and extol your name for ever and ever. Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom. One generation will commend your works to another; they will tell of your mighty acts. They will speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty, and I will meditate on your wonderful works (Psalm 145:1-5)

Poor Rachel Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) can’t seem to rest in peace.  Ever since her book Silent Spring virtually spawned the modern environmental movement, her scientific conclusions about DDT have been accepted, rejected, challenged and re-researched so often that it’s hard to know the truth about it.  Mostly, however, the issue has been an economic football kicked from post to post in a hard-fought battle between conservative libertarians and perceived “liberal” scientists.  For sure the issue has kept in everyone’s attention the advisability of spreading “cides” all over the landscape and has rightly cautioned us about using them without knowing all of the effects and side-effects of their use. [How odd it seems to me that conservatives so often fight the conservation of God's created order and libertarian economists claim to speak with scientific authority.  -DO]

Rachel grew up in rural Pennsylvania and loved to explore and learn from the natural world as she ambled around her family’s 65-acre farm.  She was such an astute observer and good student that she had an article published when she was eleven!  Her sense of wonder in nature never left her.  In fact, it became the topic of another of her books: The Sense of Wonder.  The following quote from the book is found on the WOC page Creation Quotations and Wonder Kids.  Although Carson was not known as a follower of Christ and was probably a secular naturalist, her views on children and the sense of wonder are wise words for us to heed:

A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in. Parents often have a sense of inadequacy when confronted on the one hand with the eager, sensitive mind of a child and on the other with a world of complex physical nature, inhabited by a life so various and unfamiliar that it seems hopeless to reduce it to order and knowledge. In a mood of self-defeat, they exclaim, “How can I possibly teach my child about nature—why, I don’t even know one bird from another!”

I sincerely believe that for the child, and for the parent seeking to guide him, it is not half so important to know as to feel. If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil. Once the emotions have been aroused—a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and the unknown, a feeling of sympathy, pity, admiration or love—then we wish for knowledge about the object of our emotional response. Once found, it has lasting meaning. It is more important to pave the way for the child to want to know than to put him on a diet of facts he is not ready to assimilate.

[From The Sense of Wonder, by Rachel L. Carson]

[Our grandchildren---from top to bottom:  Gunnar, Elle, and Anna]

For most kids in the US this week marks the final week of the school year.  Their parents are now making decisions about how the children will be spending the summer.  My encouragement is to give them “continuing education” via the outdoors where wonders never cease.  Of course, that means some significant determination—and education—for you parents and grandparents.  Just take ‘em outdoors!

[The Lord, the God of Israel, says] “They will be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul (Jeremiah 32:38-41).

I [Jesus] pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me (John 17:20-23).

How many are your works, LORD! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures (Psalm 104:24)

One of the saddest commentaries on our times comes from “A Report on the Movement to Reconnect Children to the Natural World” by the Children and Nature Network.  It quotes a fourth-grader from San Diego: “I like to play indoors better ’cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are.”

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised by such a comment, since that’s the reason most of us adults play and work indoors.

Even though as a kid I lived in town, my friends and I hardly played indoors except for rainy weather and deep winter.  Actually that was true until Dickie Andrews’ family purchased the first television in the neighborhood.  Before TV, we all played outdoors after school until we were called inside for dinner.  Then came Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, Howdy Doody, and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. And I can remember, just as depicted in the movie “A Christmas Story,” waiting impatiently for my own secret decoder from Ovaltine—and being disappointed that it was not as exciting as it looked on TV.

But come summer, daytime TV could not compete with the woods, the pasture, or the creek.  The moms of  we “OAK Boys” (Ohlman, Andrews, Kenfield) typically asked us in the morning, “Are you going to be home for lunch, or do you want me to make you a sack-lunch?”  If the choice was sack-lunch, it came along with the admonition to be home by supper-time—an admonition that was often fruitless, since none of us had a watch.  Sometimes what we were doing was very well worth coming home to a cold supper for. [Photo of painting by Armand Merizon, artist whose home was only about 20 miles from where the OAK Boys hung out.]

Grant and Peter Vos and their hideout

I truly grieve for my grandchildren today—for their not having the opportunity to experience the joy we Oak Boys had of almost total outdoor freedom, of hideouts in the woods, of shinnying up and bending down trees, of pulling apart stumps searching for a possum, I even grieve their loss of such risk: risk of a dunking trying to cross the creek on a wobbly log or launching a poorly constructed raft, risk of getting a poison ivy rash, risk of getting a nasty pinch grabbing crawdads, risk of getting stung throwing stones at a paper wasp nest, risk of getting sprayed by daring to be the one who got closest to the skunk before it cocked its tail, and even the risk of falling through the ice on a shallow muskrat pond—one we had grown familiar enough with to know that it was not deep enough to drown in.  Life itself is a big risk, but it is less risky when we learn from having taken smaller risks—risks that often result in scratches, cuts, burns, bruises, slivers, rashes, and barked shins. Pain is not only a great teacher, it is also a great behavioral change agent—the whole point of spanking!

Author Richard Louv has written a valuable book that goes into all such matters and offers us adults a great challenge: to get our children and grandchildren back outdoors: Last Child in the Woods.  Louv also spearheaded the formation of the Children and Nature Network that seeks to perpetuate the ideas, concepts, and precepts he suggests in the book.  With spring approaching, take time to examine these valuable resources and motivate yourself to be active in the fight against NDD: Nature Deficit Disorder—and CKD: Creation Knowledge Disorder.  If we worship the Creator and are His stewards—both now and in the coming Kingdom—should we not become intimate with His creation?