In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made (John 1:1-3).

[Jesus Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together (Colossians 1:15-17).

In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven (Hebrews 1:1-3).

Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite NP

One of my favorite old hymns of the church is “Fairest Lord Jesus,” in part because it was the first piece of choral music I sang in high school choir—in a secular high school! Miss Van Alsberg would probably be fired if she did that today in most secular schools. But the song came to mind afresh yesterday when I heard it on Christian radio on my way up the hill from Palm Desert to Joshua Tree NP. The lyrics of its first verse grabbed my attention because of my Wednesday post on who Jesus is to our young people today. They will be familiar to many:

Fairest Lord Jesus, ruler of all nature,
O thou of God and man the Son,
Thee will I cherish, Thee will I honor,
Thou, my soul’s glory, joy, and crown.

Yosemite woodland

The remainder of the lyrics speak of Jesus being fairer than the meadows and the woodlands in their spring attire and brighter and purer than the sunlight, moonlight, and starlight. This, of course, restates a key Christian doctrine: that the Creator is greater than His creation and is wholly separate from His creation. Most Christians understand and believe this.

Because I was a nature lover from my earliest days, I liked all the references to the natural world in the hymn.  However, even as a high school student I did not fully grasp the meaning of Jesus being the “ruler of all nature.” If I had stopped to think—or a pastor had made it clear when I was young—that there is a connection between the Jesus who loved and welcomed children two thousand years ago and the Jesus who is supernaturally acting today to sustain the creation and Who will one day redeem it, I think I would have had a lot more love and respect for the natural world much earlier. 

Merced River, Yosemite

That’s one key reason I feel that what we seek to accomplish with this Website is of vital importance to the church today. Maybe, in fact, some of you reading this are pastors or you are in a position to suggest to your pastor that sometime around Earth Day (April 22) a sermon or two on the implication of the passages above might be appropriate. Only in one of the churches I have attended have I ever heard sermons on Jesus as the “ruler of all nature” and what that might mean in our relationship to the natural world.

I’d be willing to wager that such a sermon or two would resonate with children and young adults. It’s a message they need to hear. And an important question comes out of this consideration: If Jesus is sustainer and ruler of all nature, how might we be working against Him?

The Wonder of Creation mission:

To showcase the wonder of Creation, to encourage trust in the wisdom and power of our Creator, and to inspire a desire to care for the natural world that He has entrusted to us.

[Yosemite photos by Daleberts from Flickr]

Then little children were brought to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples rebuked those who brought them. Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Matthew 19:13-14).

Yesterday I had the rare treat of being able to spend an entire day by myself wandering through one of the most unique places in North America: The Living Desert nature center in Palm Desert, California. But being a grandfather of seven—six of them under age 8, I soon felt bad that I was not able to have them share this with me. Grandfathering is like that. Most kids were enjoying their time there, but near the end of the day, I overheard a discussion between a mom and dad and their daughter who was complaining about being tired and was clearly bored.

“You’re eleven and can spend hours running around with your friends,” said mom, “and you can’t handle a few hours here?!” “Maybe we better think twice about the vacation we’ve planned for this summer!” said dad. The child muttered something in self-defense. (I felt it was a bit harsh—but then remembered saying some things similar to that when our three boys were kids!)

I was there telling myself that I was enjoying this treat like a kid; but that kid, and a few others I noted, were not enjoying it. As they walked off, I mused about how one would go about motivating kids today to be nature lovers. It’s a tough task—for a number of complicated reasons. Then the biblical account of Jesus rebuking His disciples for trying to shoo off children from “bothering” their Master came to my mind as somehow related to the problem.

To our kids, who, really, is Jesus?

The obvious theological answer to that is that since Jesus is now at the Father’s side and His Spirit is here indwelling believers, Jesus to our children is the same as who Jesus is to the rest of the world today: His body—the church—loving, and caring for each other, their neighbors, the world of lost humanity, and the good earth. To that eleven-year-old girl, Jesus would—if her parents were followers of Him—be personified in them. This is true of all who claim the name of Jesus.

But let me suggest something else here: While Jesus is indeed at His Father’s side, He is also, according to Colossians 1, the One who created all things, presently holds together all things, and who in His death, burial, and resurrection provided redemption for the cosmos, and will one day refresh, restore, reunify, and reconcile all things to God. If our children knew this about Jesus and recognized His hand in the creation in the beginning and continuing now, might they not have a different impression about the regal bighorn sheep, the sun-haloed cactus, the tenacious yucca, and every blooming desert wildflower? By isolating and insulating our kids from the wonders of His creation, are we not in the same boat with Jesus disciples: keeping the children from the Savior who is also our Creator?

That’s some pretty heavy musing, I know!  But think about it—-and feel free to discuss it using the comments feature below.

What may be known about God is plain to [men], because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse (Romans 1:190-20)

I keep returning to this passage because of its huge significance to the meaning of the creation, which in theological circles is known as the “general revelation”—or God’s other book.  This is the “book” that all people can “read” and in which all people with an open mind and heart can detect two important things: Their Creator’s “eternal power” and “divine nature.”  I have written in depth on this in other papers and on other Websites.

One of my continuing “projects” has been to list what it is in the natural world that will show us that God’s awesome power is eternal and that what we take in with our five senses will compel us to worship (the result of grasping that only one who is “divine”—God—could have made all this).  At the end of this post is a partial list of the creation’s attributes that I have collected.

Yesterday a new attribute came to mind: “inspirational patterns and textures.”  This attribute was dramatically revealed on a visit to a  wild desert oasis near Palm Springs, California, where I am visiting my brother and sister-in-law.  I came here to be inspired by what this part of the world reveals in keeping with Romans 1:19-20.

The photos that I have posted here are just a sampling of the inspirational patterns and textures from just one tree: the Californian fan palm.  (Our middle son, Eric, has scars on his chest from runing into the sawtooth edge of a young fan palm when he was a child.)

I will post photos throughout the week that reveal more of the attributes listed below.  [Clicking on a photo will enlarge it.  Then click the back arrow to get back to the full post]

1.   Mysterious light and matter
(which still defy human comprehension)

2.   Seemingly endless time
(no clearly apparentbeginning or end)

3.   Seemingly endless space
(eternality seenin the microcosm and macrocosm)

4.   Astronomical extravagance and magnitude
(“Billions and billions . . .” said Sagan)

5.   Wonderful life
(inexplicable in essence and originand apparent on earth alone)

6.   Fearsome, yet essential, death
(but marvelously linked to life

7.   Profound mystery
(beyond human understanding)

8.   Unfailing orderliness
(out of seeming chaos)

9.   Unfathomable complexity
       (defying human simplification)

10. Awesome power
    (far exceeding our own)

11. Incredibly intelligent design
    (absolutelybeyond human duplication)

12. Virtually endless variety
(biodiversity)

13. Amazing adaptability
(micro-evolution)

14. Overwhelming beauty
      (touching the heart and soul)

15. Unlimited sensory stimulation
(candy for the senses)

16. Unbridgeable gap between people and the other created things
(people alone having the capacityfor creative
thinking, abstract reasoning, and symbolic
language and having innate morality
and the instinct to worship)

 

Lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land (Song 2:11-12 KJV).

I was reared on the King James Version of the Scofield Reference Bible, and as a kid this passage from the Song of Solomon always filled me with awe and curiosity: I knew Michigan turtles and their habits well, and the only noise I ever heard from a turtle was the splash they made when I made dashes to snatch them from their sunny resting  spots.  So to discover that in Bible times turtles actually sang to welcome spring was a wonder to me.

Then, lo, the later translations came along and spoiled my treasured misconception:

See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land.

"The Turtle Dove"

So the KJV translators had meant turtle dove,  not turtle.

Nonetheless, at this time of the year when bird life is singing a sayonara serenade to winter, I still like to think of  singing turtles rejoicing in expectation of the arrival of spring.

I love the changing of the seasons.  In a world of constant change—politics, economics, employment figures, cultural shifts, computer hardware and software upgrades, ever-smarter cell phones—I HAVE to go outdoors.  My point-seven-two walk to and from work provides me at least a small daily dose of staying in touch with what is unchanging.  While change does happen in the natural world—especially in the north where all four seasons are dramatically different from each other—this change is expected, regular, normal, and older than humanity.  My soul craves such orderly constancy—constancy that has absolutely nothing to do with me.

Skunk cabbages, trillium, and jacks-in-the-pulpit unfold in that order at the marsh verges after the winter thaw every year.  Crows steal songbird eggs, gang up, and harass owls and hawks every year.  Newly arrived song sparrows sit on bush tops and celebrate life and procreation every nesting season. Robins, cedar waxwings, and starlings compete for old crabapples every spring.  Cicadas brreeee and katydids skritch every waning summer.  Sugar maples and sumacs flame every fall.  Snow turns my landscape drabness to light every winter.  Year after year after year.

And all of this occurs regardless of what happens on Wall Street, who is in the White House, when broadcast TV is going digital, who has been born and who has died, whether or not Osama bin Laden still survives, or whether or not I choose to have my molars crowned or pulled.

In the natural world, if I and my neighbors have not messed it up too badly, I can forget the vicissitudes of my life, and find both confidence and hope in the constancy of earth’s life as promised long ago by our Creator:

As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease (Genesis 8:22).

I, you, and our children need to deliberately spend time outdoors if for no other reason, as Henry David Thoreau said, than to “not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails.”  Blessed constancy from the hand and plan of God gives my soul a sunny resting spot.

[Source of girl and turtle dove painting: The Turtle Dove by Sophie Gengembre Anderson.]
[Source of sunning turtles: by OldOnliner]

Oh, the depth of the riches of the
wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable His judgments,
and His paths beyond tracing out!
“Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been His counselor?”
“Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay him?”
For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.
To Him be the glory forever! Amen.
(Romans 11:33-36)

There are a number of things I don’t understand about the natural world.  Being a child of the Age of Science, this lack of comprehension used to drive me to come up with some all-encompassing explanation for everything.  I felt that I could not rest my faith until all these imponderables were resolved and cataloged in my brain.

I have come to the point now where I believe it is presumtive to think that I should be able to have little more than a glimpse of God’s works and ways—His wondrous mysteries.  I am content to merely celebrate, study, and handle with reverent care the things He has created.

I feel it is prideful for us to believe we will ever, on this side of Glory, have all mysteries revealed to us.  It is the humble and patient Christian who is willing to wait and trust in God that He will provide us the answers—when and if He chooses.  Mankind’s attempt to understand God’s works and ways in the universe will always produce mysteries.  A mystery, after all, is nothing more than evidence that human knowledge is limited and human intelligence finite.

It seems logical for one who believes in an eternal God to also believe that the universe He created would contain some evidence of His eternality (Romans 1:20).  It should not be surprising, then, to learn that mankind’s continual attempts to incorporate into our time and space explanations of the finite physical world all the mysteries of the micro-universe and the macro-universe are often futile (i.e. quantum physics and astrophysics).  It is this fact that makes me hesitant to accept as fully correct even the explanations of Christians in the sciences who are committed to the authority of Scripture.

I don’t think anything in God’s world will ever fit perfectly into any human categories.  And it must grieve God to see His children separate from one another because of disagreements over the interpretation of mysteries they were not intended to fully understand such as the age of the cosmos, the age of the earth, and the development of life on earth.

One of the many negative results of our scientific age is that it has trained the human mind to abhor leaving a mystery a mystery.  We insist on understanding everything.  The danger in this, however, is that when we gain a little understanding, we often claim that the mystery is solved—which is at best not true, and at worst keeps us from actually learning the truth.

Further, I’ve come to believe that in Christianity there is mystery, but no mysticism.  As I understand it, mysticism describes mankind’s attempt to come to an understanding of deity indirectly through some sort of inner human intuition.  Christianity describes God’s giving mankind essential information directly through person-to-person communication.  People, however, are finite while God is infinite; therefore we will always have incomplete knowledge of Him and His works and ways.  So there will always be mysteries; but such mysteries do not obscure the basic facts God has revealed to us, nor do they excuse us from the responsibilities He has given us to care for the creation.

The Apostle Paul’s understanding of the subject of mysteries should be our own: “Oh the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!” (Rom. 11:33).  I have also read God’s rebuke of Job for thinking he could explain the way God deals with the earth and mankind, and I must parrot Job’s reply: “I am unworthy — how can I reply to you?  I put my hand over my mouth . . . I will say no more”  (Job 40:4-5)

Hand-over-mouth is a gesture we ought to be more accustomed to.

(DNA model source)
(Nebulae photos from the Hubble Telescope site)