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