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)

Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise Him in the heights! Praise Him, all His angels; praise Him, all His hosts! Praise Him, sun and moon; praise Him, all you stars of light! Praise Him, you heavens of heavens, and you waters above the heavens! Let them praise the name of the Lord, for He commanded and they were created. He also established them forever and ever; He made a decree which shall not pass away. Praise the Lord from the earth, you great sea creatures and all the depths; fire and hail, snow and clouds; stormy wind, fulfilling His word; mountains and all hills; fruitful trees and all cedars; beasts and all cattle; creeping things and flying fowl; kings of the earth and all peoples; princes and all judges of the earth; both young men and maidens; old men and children. Let them praise the name of the Lord, for His name alone is exalted; His glory is above the earth and heaven (Psalm 148:1-13).

Randy Trudeau

Few people fail to be touched by a stunning photo of natural beauty or a gripping verbal description of natural events.  But that is not enough for our souls.  To truly grasp creation’s meaning, one must experience it. The wild highlights our finiteness, vulnerability, and our utter and complete dependence upon the creating and sustaining power of God.

John Calvin called the natural world the “theater of God’s glory,” but it is even more than a theater; it’s a cathedral.  And awareness of God’s holiness only occurs when we enter it with the right spirit.  The word “cathedral” comes from the Latin term for “chair”: cathedra.  Traditionally a cathedral is the sacred place where a church bishop has his chair of authority—his throne.  While human bishops are supposed to keep us mindful of our stewardship role in the created order, too often the trappings and traditions of man hinder our capacity to hear the “still, small voice” of God in our urban churches.

For that reason, it’s important for us to preserve and treasure the cathedral of wilderness where we see that God, the ultimate authority, is clearly on the throne and where His wordless revelation can still be clearly seen and understood (Romans 1:20).  When truly attentive people enter the wild, they immediately recognize the signs that this is holy ground—a place where to them a flaming autumn maple is no less evidence of God’s miracle-working power and presence than the burning bush was to Moses.

Also important is for us to recognize that in the wilderness sanctuary we’re not alone in the impulse to worship.  God’s other creatures worship there as well.  Yesterday, for instance, I was walking the trap line with my Odawa friend, Randy Trudeau, on Manitoulin Island in Northern Ontario.  It was one of those crystal mornings with a brilliant sun creating diamonds on every weed and tree twig.  As we walked, Randy spoke of how the Anishinaabe elders teach that the way everything grows upward tells us that all of creation worships its Creator.

Likewise, the prophets Isaiah and David remind us that all created things in their own nature respond to God—even trees, rivers, and mountains. (Isa. 55:12; Psa. 98:8)  This amazing truth from the Old Testament is echoed in the Revelation where all God’s creatures are seen as worshiping the One who died in order that the cosmos may be redeemed: “Every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, I heard saying: ‘Blessing and honor and glory and power be to Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb [Jesus Christ], forever and ever!’” (Rev. 5:13)

As Randy and I walked through a frozen marsh under a sapphire sky we stopped for a moment as I sang the doxology to the tune of Old 100th: “Praise God from whom all blessing flow; praise Him all creatures here below; praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.  Amen.” [YouTube video of this classic doxology  here]

What a joy it is to share praise of the Creator with the other creatures who have been doing in since the genesis of creation—and think that it may not be long before Revelation 5:13 is fulfilled and God’s kingdom has come and His will is done “on earth as it is in heaven.”

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. “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).

[Photo source: Christ is Creator]

Here is what George MacDonald wrote in reference to this reality:

“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.” [Photo: RunnerJenny]

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, or living thing that belongs to God is to ask how we can use what He has made so that we will honor Him and enjoy Him through it and in it.

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 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 tall 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, “vermin” like woodchucks, gophers, and chipmunks. [Photo: by Enoch Ross]

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.

My desire now is to celebrate the wonder of God in creation and acknowledge 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 humbly manage His works in a manner that glorifies Him.

Consider in conclusion the thoughts of Jean Mouroux penned over sixty years ago about the significance of man as the serving master—or “creation’s priest.”

Man is linked with nature in the vital, moral, and religious orders; and with her he forms an organic whole which finds its meaning and definitive fulfillment in the glory of God.  But man alone is conscious of it.  He alone is able to present the world to God in thought and love and to glorify God through the world.  Thus he is bound up with nature, but only to rule, complete, and achieve it: he is “the animal that commands,” but commands in order to serve and do homage; and thus he is truly creation’s priest.  And fraternal nature, not unhelpful, but seeking, desiring, looks up to him who alone can fulfill her desire by giving her a soul and a voice wherewith to honor her God.

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 (Romans 8:20-21).

C. S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer in particular have helped me form my view of the meaning of the natural world. And it was Lewis who introduced me to the literary and spiritual mentor who helped him form his view of the creation—among many other views: George MacDonald.

I have used MacDonald’s and Schaeffer’s thought extensively in the articles that reside on this site, but have somewhat ignored Lewis. So today I am going to let “Jack” have a say.

First a little background: I used to be a member of the Audubon Society—in large part in order to receive the always enjoyable Audubon magazine. My membership, of course, also gave me access to the local Society meetings, which I attended for a while. To tell the truth, however, I always left those meetings with a feeling of sadness. I didn’t attend long enough to really develop any significant personal relationships with other members, but the impression I received was that few, if any, were followers of Christ.

All seemed to be thoroughgoing naturalists in the philosophical meaning of that word. Nature provided them with their highest source of joy and practically functioned as their god. And when speakers would come and talk of the decline of this or that bird species or the continuing degradation of the natural world created by careless people, gloom settled on everyone.

If nature is the highest good and you believe that nature is all there is, it’s easy to understand why general depression presses down on you. If there is no hope beyond the material world we live in, the degradation of the earth leads to the degradation of hope.

Here’s how Lewis explained it at the conclusion of chapter nine in his book Miracles:

Only Supernaturalists really see Nature. You must go a little away from her, and then turn around and look back. Then at last the true landscape will become visible. You must have tasted, however briefly, the pure water from beyond the world before you can be distinctly conscious of the hot, salty tang of Nature’s current. To treat her as God, or as Everything, is to lose the whole pith and pleasure of her.

Come out, look back, and then you will see: this astonishing cataract of bears, babies, and bananas [and birds]; this immoderate deluge of atoms, orchids, oranges, cancers, fleas, gases, tornadoes and toads. How could you ever have thought this was the ultimate reality? How could you ever have thought that it was merely a stage-set for the moral drama of men and women? She is herself. Offer her neither worship nor contempt. Meet her and know her. If we are immortal, and if she is doomed (as scientists tell us) to run down and die, we shall miss this half-shy and half-flamboyant creature, this ogress, this [saucy girl], this incorrigible fairy, this dumb witch.

But the theologians tell us that she, like ourselves, is to be redeemed. The ‘vanity’ to which she was subjected was her disease, not her essence…. We shall still be able to recognize our old enemy, friend, playfellow and foster mother, so perfected as to be not less, but more, herself. And that will be a merry meeting.

That is the joy of hope that resides in the heart of those who serve and love the true and living God. So we are indeed saddened to see the creation degraded and abused and species formed by the design and power of the Creator driven into extinction by our carelessness, greed, and over-consumption. But because we know the Creator and we know the hope that even nature has for its redemption and renewal in the coming Kingdom (Romans 8:18ff), that sadness ought to act as a motivation for us to once again become the stewards of creation we were intended to be.

Francis Schaeffer believed that it should compel us to be involved even before the consummation in a “substantial healing” of all the rifts created by the Fall. It was this truth about the natural world that was in part the motivation for Lewis to write the Narnia series where a perfected natural world in tandem with the lovers of Aslan cooperated to defeat evil. The same understanding also works its way through Lewis’ less popular “Ransom Trilogy”—his three science fiction novels: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength.

As I write these words, I am sitting at my sister-in-law Shirley’s dining room table looking out on a frozen Manitowaning Bay from her home on Ontario’s Manitoulin Island at the top of Lake Huron.  The sun is shining but is filtered through a haze of snow dust sparkling in the air. 

Nature is in the deep freeze now, but we have God’s promise: spring will come; warmth will return; butterflies and bees will grace our days again. While we wait, though, I’d like to recommend that you read some Lewis books or MacDonald novels to help lift your spirits and remind you of the coming eternal spring. If you haven’t read Lewis’ science fiction series, give it a try—reading them in the order I’ve given above. Lewis again:

Say your prayers in a garden early, ignoring steadfastly the dew, the birds, and the flowers, and you will come away overwhelmed by its freshness and joy; go there in order to be overwhelmed and, after a certain age, nine times out of ten, nothing will happen to you. (The Four Loves, ch. 2, para. 28)