It’s our desire to see the “Wonder Kids” page become a sort of community for parents, grandparents, and other caregivers where there is a good deal of idea sharing.  We have added a response box at the bottom of the “Wonder Kids” page where you can suggest ways to help children learn about God’s creation and develop a biblical worldview regarding the care of creation.

Click on the “Wonder Kids” menu item at the top of this page, and when you get there, scroll down to the bottom to find the comments box where you can make these suggestions.

On the top of the “Articles” page is a new entry titled “The Lion, the Curse, and the Evangelical.”  If you want to give it a look, click on the “Articles” menu item at the top of this page.  It will be the first article preview you see.  At the end of the preview, click on the “Read More” link to get to the full article.

Here’s a snippet from the article:

Witnessing for Christ means not only sharing God’s salvation plan for man; it also means that we demonstrate renewed appreciation and care for the natural world that God will also restore, renew, and reunite.  Simply put, nature is also going to be “born again.”  Do we hold that joyous truth in our hearts as a motivation to cherish creation’s fellow worshipers who are also recipients of God’s attention and compassion?  If we saw the other living creatures as fellow worshipers of Christ the Creator, would our callousness toward them not diminish?

One of the activities I try every year is climbing trees—regardless of my “senior” status.  I’m often amused at the reactions I get when I’m spotted in a tree.  A few years ago I tried to get as far up as I could into a great climbing tree we had in our front yard: a sycamore.  The first response was from a robin that landed about three feet from my nose.  I’m not sure exactly what shock looks like in a robin, but from the loud squawk and feathers-flying retreat it made when it spotted me, I know it was shocked.  When Marge, my wife, pulled into the driveway from the store, I know she was surprised at being hailed from about 25 feet over her head.  Her response was a bit different.  Something like, “Get out of that tree, you old codger!  You’ll break your neck.”  (I think she actually used a bit more colloquial term for me.)

Well, the thing is—I love trees!  I have ever since I was old enough to climb one.  And you have to hug a tree to climb it; so, yes, you could call me a literal “tree hugger.”  Much of what I appreciate about trees was written in one of RBC’s booklets.  You’ll find it on this blogsite by clicking on the “Author Resources” page in the right-hand menu under “Discovery Series.”  While I highlight in the booklet many of the benefits of trees to the environmental health of the earth and to our own health, we didn’t have space for a number of those benefits.  Below is an enumeration of the things trees do for us.

Twenty Things Trees Do for Us

1.  Provide oxygen.  Trees, in a sense, inhale sunlight and carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen.  They’re the “lungs” of the planet acting in counterpoint to living animals which inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. As consumers of carbon dioxide, trees are our first line of defense against global warming.  Not only do they turn carbon dioxide into oxygen, they also store up carbon in their wood, sometimes holding it for hundreds—even thousands of years.

2.  Moderate temperature.  An abundance of trees reduces the extremes of heat and cold.

3.  Enhance rainfall.  By transpiring moisture into the air and by cooling the air, trees increase rainfall.  For instance, the normally arid land of Jordan has increased its annual rainfall by 15% through reforestation in about 40 years. This transpiration is a vital part of the earth’s water cycle that makes our planet suitable for life.

4.  Collect and absorb dust and other atmospheric pollutants.

5.  Protect the earth from rapid climate change.  This is the natural result of the previous vital ecological functions of trees.

6.  Produce and protect healthy soil.  Decomposed leaves and wood make up a substantial part of the topsoil that all living things require for life and health.  Leaf litter insulates soil from temperature extremes. Roots aerate soil, add nitrogen to soil, bind soil, circulate water through the soil, and protect soil from erosion and thus enhance stream flow so vital for the life of aquatic creatures and plants.  Trees provide windbreaks to protect soil from wind erosion.  In mass, trees reduce flooding by holding soil and absorbing and collecting as much as 20 percent of rainfall.

7.  Provide food.  Tree fruit provides much of the food and nutrients that humans require and provide most of the food for several other living species.

8.  Provide shelter and/or cover for most animals and birds.

9.  Provide protection for thousands of species of sun-sensitive plants.

10.  Provide healing products.  Many of our medicines or medicine components come from trees, as do other vital nutritional necessities.

11.  Provide building products.  Nearly every home in America owes its structural integrity to wood.  Add to that the tree products and tree cavities that provide homes for birds, animals, and insects vital to life on earth.

12.  Provide paper products.  Consider your quality of life without books, magazines, newspapers, cardboard boxes, match sticks, printer paper, maps, wrapping paper, and toilet paper!

13.  Provide wood for furniture and dozens of other household and workplace products.

14.  Provide fuel.  Half of the earth’s population uses wood as fuel for heating and cooking.

15.  Provide “sensory candy.”  Trees in their multiple shapes, colors, and landscape contours are among the most beautiful things that people can see.  Tree fragrances are among the most pleasant that people and animals can smell.  Tree flavors are among the most appreciated tastes of people around the globe.  Trees act as sound buffers and as sound producers (the sound of wind and rain in the trees being vital to the human sensory experience).

16.  Produce a sense of rootedness and community.  Consider how many streets and community developments are named for trees.  Sadly, we find that people often name their streets and developments for the natural features they destroyed to build their communities.  Nonetheless, flying over America, we can see that our most cherished trees are the ones that line our streets, encircle our homes, and festoon our parks.  People who have grown up in the company of familiar trees understand how important they are the day the trees fall.

17.  Provide living fences that hold back drifting sand and snow

18.  Reduce light intensity from the sun.

19.  Provide privacy.

20.  Protect watersheds for communities.

How To Care For Trees

1. Learn about the forests (in order to appreciate their role in our lives).
2. Remember the forest’s relationship to people as mutual creations of God.
3. Remind yourself regularly of your personal responsibility in creation stewardship.
4. Stay aware of forest policies and uses.
5. Recognize the forest’s vulnerability to needless consumption and abuse.
6. Become intimate with a few nearby trees or forests.
7. And climb one every chance you get!

You might also want to read my essay on “The Trouble With Trees” which is also found by going to “Pages” on the right-hand menu, then to “Articles.”  When you get there, scroll down to find the article.

See you outdoors!

Dean

“I have not yet been able to put your environmental concern into my view of eschatology [the "end times"].”

So said a good friend. He comes from the same Dispensationalist background I come from. I appreciate his candor. I know what he means: Since the earth will “wear out like a garment” (Heb. 1:11); since some of it will “melt” (2 Pet. 3:12); since Jesus will return for us; since our future home will be heaven; since man is most important to God, why should we care about the state of the earth?

My answer has to be this: We have have been looking at the wrong end of the Bible to understand our relationship to the creation. We need to look at the beginning. While how creation happened is constantly debated in Christian circles, there is seldom an argument about the early mandates found in the first two chapters of Genesis about how we use and relate to the creation: the dominion mandate in 1:28 and the marriage mandate in 2:24. Sandwiched between those two, however, is the stewardship mandate in 2:15. We seldom question the dominion mandate or the marriage mandate. But I don’t think we do well with the stewardship mandate.

Here we are told that man and woman were put into the Garden to cultivate it and to take care of it. The full sense of those infinitives in the Hebrew includes being a husbandman, or steward, of it—a task that means putting a hedge around it, protecting it, serving it, preserving it, and saving it. I feel that this command is often the forgotten mandate. If we had been heeding this divine requirement as enthusiastically as we do the dominion mandate, I think things would be significantly different—at least in the Christian community today.

So why should we care about the state of the earth?

1) We should care because it is the obedient thing to do. Nowhere in Scripture do I see that the original mandates have been rescinded. Although our dominion is often abused because of the Fall, the dominion mandate remains our ideal. Although our marriages suffer because of sin, the marriage mandate remains our ideal. Although the task of stewardship is difficult in the presence of evil and because of the curse, the creation care mandate remains our ideal. We indeed glorify God in our obedience to all three mandates.

2) We should care because it is the loving thing to do. In Psalm 145 we have this revealing verse: “The Lord is righteous in all His ways and loving toward all He has made” (Psa. 145:17). That verse follows right after the one that says God opens His hand and satisfies “the desires of every living thing.” At the very least we can understand from these verses that if God is righteous and loving toward all He has made, we can attempt to be the same. As Francis Schaeffer reminded us, “If we love the Lover, we will love that the Lover has made.” Further, when we care properly for the earth, we also demonstrate love for our neighbor and for ourselves—so that all aspects of the Great Commandment can be carried out.

Certainly there are many unanswered questions about the future state of the earth, the material final state of the believer, and the nature of heaven. Nonetheless, it is clear to me that Jesus’ promise of future bliss must never be an excuse for present carelessness regarding His creation. If the atoning sacrifice of the second Adam is going to result in the reconciliation of all things ruined by the sin of the first Adam (Col. 1:20); if all of creation is on tiptoe groaning for the day when it will be released from its bondage to decay (Rom. 8:20-22 Phillips); if Isaiah’s Messianic peaceable kingdom is yet to come, how can I be less than a loving and careful steward of God’s creation handiwork.

So since we are no doubt closer in time to the restoration than we are to the time of the curse, our outlook should be that of Isaac Watts who wrote of the coming return of Earth’s true King,

Joy to the world! The Lord is come;

Let earth receive her King;

Let every heart prepare Him room,

And heaven and nature sing. . . .

He comes to make His blessings flow

Far as the curse is found.

See you outdoors!

Dean

Yesterday, November 13, I put up a quiz on identifying conifer cones.  Check the previous post for the photo.

Here are the answers:

1.  Sugar pine. I collected this years ago in the foothills of Mt. Lassen, the southernmost volcano in the Cascade Range located in Northern California.  It is the largest pine and can be 200 feet tall.  It’s cone is the longest: up to 20 inches!  The name comes from its sweet pitch, which John Muir liked better than maple syrup.  John had lots of good opinions, but come on—better than maple syrup?  Sugar pine provides some of the finest knot-free lumber available, but it is declining rapidly because of a blister rust.  Sad.

2.  Ponderosa pine. I actually collected this here in West Michigan, where it is not a native tree.  It is one of the most common of Western pines.  If you’ve traveled in the West, you would have seen many of these with its distinct orangish bark with dark crevasses.  It too can grow taller than 200 feet.  It’s bark has a nice vanilla smell to it.

3.  White pine. I picked this one up in a nearby natural park.  And picking it up is not what you want to do unless you have something to wash off the pine pitch that collects on the tips of all its scales.  This collection of whitish pitch makes this cone easy to identify.  It is a relative of the sugar pine and that’s why it’s cones look similar.  This was the pine that built many of the original homes of the upper Midwest.  I’ve heard it said that enough Michigan white pine was cut into lumber in the late 1800’s that you could have floored both peninsulas of Michigan with it.  Our lumber barons, the elegant homes of whom are found all over this region, were terrible stewards of this resource.  Only after 100 years are they finally coming back—but are not yet a major source of timber in Michigan.  Only one percent of the original white pine forest is left.  In its prime, many white pines also topped 200 feet in height.

4.  Giant Sequoia. This one I gathered in the mountains above Hume Lake that rests between Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks.  Of course we know this one as the world’s largest tree.   If the shape of the cone looks familiar, it may be that you’ve chatted with a US National Park ranger in uniform.  The medallion on the ranger hatband is the sequoia cone.  And the familiar arrowhead arm patch has a sequoia tree on it.  The oldest sequoia is around 3500 years old.  Imagine the history that is included in that lifespan!

5.  Douglas fir. I picked this cone up on my way to work yesterday from a small grove not far from our RBC building.  It does okay in a few spots in the Midwest, but it is primarily a Western tree—the workhorse timber tree of the US.  It is the “cadillac of Christmas trees,” being the most common tree for that use.  Its prime trees can top 400 feet—the tallest one, cut for timber in 1902, was 415 feet tall.  The cone is easy to identify as well: it has three-forked “snake tongues” sticking out from under each scale.

6.  Coast Redwood. Surprised?  The smallest cone is from the tallest tree.  I picked this one up at a redwood seed farm on Whidbey Island in Washington—right across the road from the Pacific Rim campus of the Au Sable Institute (check out Au Sable in the links menu).  Actually, most of the tall redwoods now are around 360 feet, so a few Douglas firs can overtop them; but in numbers the redwood averages out as the tallest of our trees.  The oldest one known is about 2,200 years old.  The photo above shows how the redwood cones grow at the tips of the bough.

So how did you do with the quiz?

When you consider how small the seeds of these conifers are (the seeds found beneath the cone scales) and how big the trees are, you again have to be amazed at the wonder of God’s creation.

See you outdoors,

Dean

On my three-quarter-mile walk between home and work are a number of office buildings, a home for the elderly, and a couple dozen condos. But to my great joy, an abandoned orchard extends out about six acres from the middle of my route.  I call it “my orchard” because I hardly ever see anyone else in it.  I see their traces though: mostly piles of landscaping waste, litter from an old vagrant’s hideout, and some bittersweet vines robbed by folks like me who use bittersweet for fall decorating.  My most frequent outdoor adventures are in this old orchard—my own little playground, which I sometimes share with our grandchildren.

Along the condo drive is a long row of Austrian pines, red pines, and some Colorado spruce.  The cones from the Austrian pines are about avocado size—which is the perfect kicking size.  So I will sometimes target one poised and ready on the asphalt and kick it some 300 yards all the way home—just like I kicked cans when I was a kid.  It gives me great satisfaction when I can keep it rolling pretty much in a straight line.  Nonetheless, I do zigzag quite a bit.  The other day, in fact, I almost zigged right into one of our neighbors walking the other way.  She and her husband often, shall a say, look “askance” at this old dude with white chin whiskers who seems to have entered and gone deeply into his second childhood—what with my also climbing the pine trees to collect oozing pitch for my homemade wood preservative, or my standing in the drive chattering at the red squirrels or mimicking the cardinals and robins to see what kind of reaction I get.

What I don’t know is how many askance looks I get from inside those office buildings when I venture off into what they probably view as just another “empty” lot waiting for a building.  (I’m thinking about chaining myself to a sumac bush or something if I see the bulldozers coming!  I suppose I could build a protest platform on the top of the orchard’s tallest tree like Julia Butterfly Hill did in her redwood.  But a sparse 20-foot walnut is not very regal—and I don’t think I can get wireless out there.)

But back to my kicking the pine cone.  It brought to mind a little quiz I sometimes do with school kids—and even at times with my colleagues at RBC.  The conifer cone test.  I thought maybe y’all might like to take it.  Below is a photo of six different cones.  The largest, rather foreshortened in the picture, is actually a foot long without the stem.  The smallest is about a half inch.  The cones come from a white pine, a ponderosa pine, a sequoia, a Douglas fir, a redwood, and a sugar pine.  Here’s the object of the quiz: see if you can match the cone to the tree—without going to Google images or Flickr!

I’ll give you the answers tomorrow.

See you outdoors!

Dean

Click on the photo to see it full size

As much as I am captivated by nature, it never fulfills me. Though I find delight in the natural world, I’m also filled at times with sadness—a spiritual sadness caused by a lingering sense that something is missing—something is wrong. Our material world ultimately does not satisfy my soul, which feels trapped within it.

The material realm in which we live and move and have our being has a veil that stands between it and the Glory that transcends it. The veil consists of these elements: Lost access to Eden and the intimacy Adam had with the Creator, original sin that has warped our perceptions, spiritual dark forces that have bound the majority of mankind, and the curse that God placed on the earth to discipline us for our rebellion.

Further, I’m saddened by the realization that those who have not been born from above are incapable of perceiving the things revealed to the spirits of followers of Christ by the Holy Spirit.

The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:14).

And still beyond that is the action of God to eventually blind those who deliberately reject their inborn knowledge of Him:

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. (Romans 1:21).

Hence when unbelievers adamantly claim to see no evidence of God in the natural world, they are speaking the truth. For followers of Christ to argue with them is fruitless. By God’s grace, through the Spirit and the Word, we are able to discern truth about the realms beyond the material that unbelievers are not able to discern. However, since God “is not willing that any should perish,” unbelievers can, by exercising faith, be given the grace to see what they could not previously see—which should motivate us in our evangelism.

We can’t forget, though, that even believers are still operating under the same clouds that obscure what our souls long for—lost access to paradise, the sin nature, the spiritual forces of darkness, and God’s curse on the earth. In addition, we are still confined, in this life, to the realm of the material. This will not always be the case, however. We will one day obtain an incorruptible body just like that of Jesus Christ, which will be capable of moving about freely in and between both the spiritual and the material realms. In the days after Jesus arose from the grave, dozens, if not hundreds, of witnesses, saw Jesus in such a body. [Read 1 Corinthians 15:35ff.]

But until then “we see through a glass darkly.” Hence we know that we’re missing or are not seeing clearly many aspects of reality that will one day make us complete. So when we experience our present natural world, we have a degree of sadness and a longing for Eden. Paul expresses it profoundly:

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. 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 as sons, 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 he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:19-28). [emphasis mine.]

So there’s a universal groan that’s more felt than heard throughout the cosmos: a groaning non-human creation, a groaning body of believers, and a groaning Holy Spirit that labor for and long for the restoration of Paradise—the coming Kingdom of Peace when the spiritual and material realms will again be one. So, oft sad soul, be encouraged, and let your heart sing in anticipation with Isaac Watts:

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found.

Keep in mind while celebrating the first advent of Christ by singing “Joy To the World” that it is a hymn about the wonderful coming second advent when all the groaning will cease.

See you outdoors!

Dean

While I don’t hunt anymore, I’m convinced that it was my hunting—and fishing—experiences that taught me the most about the outdoors in my early years. When you’re after your quarry, all your senses are at their sharpest. Each animal you hunt requires different tuning of your senses. Squirrel hunting was one of my favorite—perhaps because it was in the middle of October, which in Michigan is an absolutely glorious season.

Squirrel hunting on a calm day is rather easy with crisp and newly fallen leaves providing that give-away rustle and motion that catches your attention quickly. It’s a totally different thing on a windy day. All the leaves are moving—on the ground and in the trees—and the wind in the trees masks the rustles created by little feet.

On a squirrel hunt one windy October day, I gave up stalking because my own footfalls in the dry leaves were hampering my hearing acuity. So I sat down with my back against a tree in order to study the woods mostly with my vision. But it was a sound that got my attention. It was sort of a “snap” over my head followed quickly by a “dup” in the leaves behind me. “A squirrel is in the tree above me nibbling an acorn,” I whispered to myself—slowly looking up. Couldn’t see a thing, though. Yet the snap. . . dupping kept up. I got a kink in my neck by my constant craning. “Snap. . .dup” it went again. It was very close to me—and frustrating me. Why couldn’t I see the critter? It had to be close enough to hit with a stick.

So I stood up, turned around, and faced the tree. “Snap. . .dup” again. And my eye caught something landing in the leaves behind a tall shrub to the right of the tree: a shrub with many small trunks no larger than two inches in diameter. Now that the sun was really warming the woods, something in the bush was snapping more and more, sending projectiles out over ten feet. After several minutes of examination, I discovered that the bush was spitting seeds!

I had just been introduced to the wonder of witch hazel seeding—and why the shrub is sometimes called the “snapping hazel.” It is a real oddity. It fruits, flowers, and buds all at the same time: late fall. Most of us know it as the source of the smelly astringent that our mothers used on Q-tips to clean out our grubby little ears.

What’s with the seed thing? Well, because it has so many trunks and lives in the understory of the woods, it airmails its seeds as far as thirty feet away so that when they germinate, they don’t have to complete with the parent plant for sunlight and nutrients!

After the hunt, of course, before I got back into my car I also had to take care of a bunch of other seeds that were being dispersed another way: by hitching a ride on my jeans—various burrs and what we called “beggar ticks” that had points sharp enough to make it all the way through the fabric.

I never cease to be amazed at the unique means of seed dispersal that the Creator has built into His creation. His wonders never end.

See you outdoors!

Dean

This glowing dawn,

all nature stands on tiptoe

waiting

drenched in wonder.

grasses nod

Soft air breathes

leaves sigh.

petals stir

waters ripple

mists rise

Birds loose shining shafts of song.

High in the blue

bright wings drift

hover and dart.

By fragrant brier

furred bodies freeze

nostrils twitch

whiskers quiver and stiffen

sharp eyes glance

sure paws flash.

Shimmering insects flit and fall.

On dewy thorn

the patient spider weaves

her jeweled web.

In weedy depths

of still green waters

shadowy forms gleam

silently gliding.

Breezes freshen

the morning quickens.

Washed in new gold

all nature waits on tiptoe

watching

wordlessly questing:

Is this the day?

will it be soon,

the hour of earth’s redemption,

Life’s return?

Margaret Clarkson in “All Nature Sings”

Scripture:

Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 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. 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 as sons, 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 he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently” (Rom. 8:17-25, NIV).

See you outdoors!

Dean

Iguazu Falls / Terry Bidgood 2008

I believe the key element in our recovering the lost theology of nature—a loss that is evident in our often insensitive and utilitarian approach to the natural world—is to recognize that the beauty of the created world is evidence of the Creator himself.  It’s significant that in the Genesis creation account the first fact mentioned about the trees of the garden was that they were “pleasing to the eye” (Gen. 2:9). Yes, they were “good for food,” but apparently what was most striking to Adam and Eve was their beauty.

"Falls of the Kaaterskill" Thomas Cole, 1826

John Muir believed that “everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.”  The value of natural beauty to the human soul was what inspired the masterful landscape painter Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School of painting.  With his paintings he wanted to put people back in touch with the Creator.  He hoped his paintings would give city-dwelling admirers a yearning for the outdoors where they too could discover what he had—that “in gazing on the pure creations of the Almighty, he feels a calm religious tone steal through his mind, and when he has turned to mingle [again] with his fellow men, the chords which have been struck in that sweet communion cease not to vibrate.” Maybe that’s why I admire Cole’s paintings and not Picasso’s.  If we saw something like a Picasso in nature, we’d know at once it did not come from God’s hands!  Beauty may be nature’s most profound apologist for God.