Celebrating the Wonder of Creation (Part 1)
The bittersweet celebration
Fall is the most dramatic season of the year in the north and east regions of the US. It’s like the creation is holding a party, celebrating its making by the hand of its Creator and coming Redeemer—just before it turns down the light and crawls under the billowy comforter of snow to sleep and dream of the joy that will come at its reawakening. For the next few days, I’d like to offer a series of posts on how followers of Jesus can best understand and celebrate the wonder of creation. Wouldn’t it be awesome if the world leaders who will be meeting in Copenhagen in December to discuss the world’s climate issues were unified around these understandings?
God Made the Earth and Owns It
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1:1). The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is Mine and you are but aliens and My tenants (Lev. 25:23 NIV). The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness, the world and those who dwell therein (Ps. 24:1).
The Word of God tells us that “God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). And according to the New Testament, the same Jesus who came into this world to rescue us from ourselves is the One who first made our world and everything that is in it, for “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him” (Col. 1:15-16).
George MacDonald wrote, “If the world is God’s, every true man and woman ought to feel at home in it. Something is wrong if the calm of the summer night does not sink into the heart, for it embodies the peace of God. Something is wrong in the man to whom the sunrise is not a divine glory, for therein is embodied the truth, the simplicity, and the might of the Maker.”
The aster celebration
This 19th-century writer obviously believed and understood that we live and breathe in a world that shouts the reality of God from every piece of matter and every natural event. Almost without question, the most significant difference between the worldview of the Bible and the beliefs of secular humanism is the Christian understanding that God made the earth and it belongs to Him. What comes of this belief is significant. When we are users and occupiers of property that belongs to someone else, we rightfully consider the interests of the owner as well as our own. In fact, as tenants and stewards, our own interests are secondary to that of the owner. Our challenge in any use of the land, air, water, and the earth’s living matter that belongs to God is to ask how we can use what He has made so that we will honor Him and in the process find joy for ourselves.
More than a hundred years ago, Adam Clarke saw the practical implications of God’s ownership when he wrote:
The works of the Lord are multitudinous and varied. They are so constructed as to show the most consummate wisdom in their design, and in the end for which they are formed. They are all God’s property, and should be used only in reference to the end for which they were created. All abuse and waste of God’s creatures are spoil and robbery on the property of the Creator (quoted by Charles Haddon Spurgeon in The Treasury Of David, p.335).
“All abuse and waste of God’s creatures are spoil and robbery on the property of the Creator.” How that reality should awaken us to a fuller awareness of our high calling to care for what God cares for!
Those words take me back to my late twenties when, as a frustrated squirrel hunter one fall, I shot a porcupine high in a huge oak—merely because it was there and I had an unspent shotgun shell in my gun! Porcupines are common in Michigan’s north woods, and they are virtually unprotected by game laws because they are considered “nuisance animals,” like woodchucks, gophers, and chipmunks. I believe that God, who notes the death of a common sparrow, watches over all that He has made. Now I realize that the shame I felt looking into the lifeless eyes of one of God’s creatures I had thoughtlessly wasted might have been a reflection of God’s own heart. But at the time, I passed it off as an unmanly emotion. [Porcupine photo by yathin]
How can we celebrate the wonder of God in creation?
By acknowledging that as the Creator’s landholders, we are to examine the Word of God and prayerfully consider how we are to occupy His territory and manage His works in a manner that glorifies Him. The same Jesus who came into this world to rescue us from ourselves is the One who first made our world and everything in it.
See you outdoors!
Dean