The whole creation is on tiptoe to see the wonderful sight of the sons of God coming into  their own.  The world of creation cannot as yet see reality, not because it chooses to be blind, but because in God’s purpose it has been so limited—yet it has been given hope.  And the hope is that in the end the whole of created life will be rescued from the tyranny of change and decay, and have its share in that magnificent liberty which can only belong to the children of God.  It is plain to anyone with eyes to see that at the present time all created life groans in a sort of universal travail. (Romans 8:18-22 in the J. B. Phillips paraphrase)

Mist-shrouded sequoia

Two weeks ago I was experiencing the wonders of the west slope of the Sierra Nevada—in particular the northern Sequoia groves of California’s Calaveras Big Trees State Park.  It was one of those changeable days common in November when the clouds don’t seem to know what to do: break, drop rain, throw sleet, or just sock everything in.  The moisture the clouds left, however, deepened all the changing colors and flung through the air a host of rich fragrances from both the forest floor and the surrounding sequoias and the sugar and ponderosa pines.  Distant vistas were afforded only when the clouds whimsically decided to break.

The rich and pleasant fragrances reminded me of an excerpt from a book by George MacDonald.  I had already been touched in my soul for years by the sensory delights of the piney woods when I came across MacDonald’s novel The Musician’s Quest about a man drawn by nature to nature’s God.  Robert Falconer, the main character, an agnostic who had been constantly repulsed by spiritually stagnant and/or phony church people, was out on a walk pondering whether God was truly there when “a gentle wind, laden with pine odors from the sun-heated trees behind him, flapped its tight wing in his face.”  This scent and all nature around him soon became a divine messenger:

Strange as it may sound to those who have never thought of such things except in connection with Sundays and Bibles and churches and sermons, that which was now working in Falconer’s mind was the first dull movement of the greatest need that the human heart possesses—the need of God.  There must be truth in the scent of that pinewood; someone must mean it. There must be a glory in those heavens that depends not upon our imagination; some power greater than they must dwell in them.  Some spirit must move in that wind that haunts us with a kind of human sorrow; some soul must look up to us from the eye of that starry flower.  Little did Robert think that such was his need—that his soul was searching after the One whose form was constantly presented to him, but as constantly obscured by the words without knowledge spoken in the religious assemblies of the land.  Little did he realize that he was longing without knowing it on Saturday for that from which on Sunday he would be repelled, again without knowing it.

How many are touched by nature’s God in this way?  And how many of us are insensitive to it as we carry on from week to week in churches that may be repelling such susceptible souls by our collective insensitivities to the awesome wonders of the creation that surround us.  I often feel that the parts of the creation that were not made in the Creator’s image are sometimes better witnesses than we who are.  This should not be.

Sequoia planted by Muir

The truth of this was carried out to its fullest and most dramatic sense in the life of John Muir whose hyper-religious and mean-spirited father consistently failed to demonstrate the love, goodness, and grace of Jesus Christ to his three children.  It took a life-long sojourn in the Sierra for John to, in part, recover from this spiritual deprivation.  In the rocks, trees, and creatures of the wild—even in the sequoia groves of Calaveras County—his searching soul found at least God’s compassion for His creation.  There he christened the world’s largest living creature “Lord Sequoia.”

I hope that eventually his searching soul came to understand that Lord Sequoia was the handiwork of our Lord, Savior, and Creator: Jesus Christ.  I hope too that each of us who do know Christ will come to see and appreciate the love that the Lord has for His creation.  Francis Schaeffer asked a poignant question of us church people:  “If I love the lover, I love what the lover has made….  If I don’t love what the lover has made, do I really love the lover at all?”

The LORD is good to all;
he has compassion on all he has made.

All you have made will praise you, O LORD;
your saints will extol you.

They will tell of the glory of your kingdom
and speak of your might,

so that all men may know of your mighty acts
and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.

Psalm 145:9-12