Last week I mentioned the opportunity I had to visit one of the few groves of old cedars left in Lebanon.  As it is with valuable trees everywhere, our human stewardship of them has often been disgraceful.  They were so valuable in ancient times that even by the time of Christ they were badly depleted.  In the second century, the Roman emperor Hadrian placed a ban on cutting them—except, of course, for imperial Roman use!  Reforestation has happened sporadically since that time.  Modern industrial times took a great toll on them, and they were again badly depleted by the middle of the 20th century. 

Since the Bible begins with unfallen man living in a Garden and ends with the redeemed sinners living in a Garden City, and since, in between, the natural world plays such an important role in the biblical narratives, I find it curious that Christians typically do not seem very interested in the natural history of the Bible lands.  I guess that because I’ve been blessed to visit Israel, Lebanon, and Jordan with Day of Discovery, I’m fascinated with the natural world of the Bible.

About a year ago I picked up in a used-book store a wonderful old tome by Henry Van Dyke, the author of The Other Wiseman and the First Christmas Tree.  He’s also the writer of the lyrics we sing to the music of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony: “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore You.” This book is a chronicle of his own trip to Israel, Jordan, and Syria in 1907, and it is titled Out-Of-Doors In the Holy Land. In the preface he expresses what I have come to feel about the importance nature in the lands of the Bible:

There are two things in the book which I would not have you miss: the first is the new conviction—new at least to me—that Christianity is an out-of-doors religion.  From the birth in the grotto at Bethlehem (where Joseph and Mary took refuge because there was no room for them in the inn) to the crowning death on the hill of Calvary outside the city wall, all of its important events took place out-of-doors.  Except the discourse in the upper chamber at Jerusalem, all of its great words, from the sermon on the mount to the last commission to the disciples, were spoken in the open air.  How shall we understand it unless we carry it under the free sky and interpret it in the companionship with nature?

I’m sure, of course, that you and I have received most of our biblical instruction indoors—in our churches, and so forth—but because I have experienced the out-of-doors in the Holy Land and can still vividly recall its vistas, smell its odors, and even savor eating “St. Peter’s fish” on a table beside the Sea of Galilee, when I read the Bible today, it relates to me in a physical as well as a spiritual manner.  One does not have to visit the lands of the Bible, however, to gain that perspective.  Merely picturing Jesus as walking shoulder to shoulder with you through your favorite outdoor place will go a long way toward helping you grasp the reality that your Savior is also the Creator of all you love.

Van Dyke went on to say that, “the second thing that I would have you find here is the deepened sense that Jesus Himself is the great and imperishable miracle.  His words are spirit and life.  His character is the revelation of the Perfect Love. This was the something new and wonderful and welcome that came to me in Palestine: the simpler, clearer, surer view of the human life of God.”

Today we typically spend all but a few brief minutes of each day entirely indoors—in car or building—surrounded by human artifacts.  I feel that in keeping ourselves from intimate interaction with what He has made, we rob ourselves of a sense of what is real, meaningful, indeed miraculous about our Creator becoming human.  We have been rescued from the effects of sin upon the physical world because the One who made us Himself became physical and material—clothed, like us, in atoms and molecules that had once given living materiality to cicadas, cuttlefish, and cedars. 

Probably only a few remember the old song that was a favorite of mine: “Down From His Glory:”  You can listen to it and read the words here.

Without reluctance, flesh and blood His substance,
He took the form of man, revealed the hidden plan;
O glorious myst’ry sacrifice of Calv’ry!
And now I know He is the great “I AM”!

Oh how I love Him!  How I adore Him!
My breath, my sunshine, my all in all!
The great Creator became my Savior,
And all God’s fullness dwelleth in Him!

 See you outdoors!

Dean