Windows of Nature

August 21, 2011

We are nearing the end of this summer series on hearing God speak through the everyday moments of our lives through what author Ken Gire calls “windows of the soul.” We’ve looked at Windows of Scripture, Windows of Art, Windows of Humanity, Windows of Depression, Windows of Vocation, Windows of Poetry, Windows of the Wilderness, and next week we will end with Windows of Tears. Today we are looking at how God speaks to us through Windows of Nature.

I want to break our time today into 3 distinct sections. First we’re going to take just a peek at some examples of how God speaks to us through windows of nature. Then we’re going to drink in and reflect on some quotations from the Bible and others that speak about this. Finally we’re going to spend some time meditating on God’s character as revealed through nature.

Part 1 – God speaks to us through Windows of Nature

Definition of “nature” from Wikipedia – “Nature refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. It ranges in scale from the subatomic to the cosmic.”

Romans 1:20 (NLT) – “. . . ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.”

God makes His invisible qualities clear through creation. We can see not only His power but His nature through nature! It’s not hidden, but is in plain view for all people to observe.

That God speaks through Nature is something taught not only in the Scriptures but in seminaries. Seminaries teach the languages of Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. John Muir called nature the “manuscripts of God.” We can learn to not only parse verbs but also seasons. We can draw truths to live by from Solomon’s proverbs and from Nature’s. God’s hand penned both Scripture and Nature, and He speaks to us through both if we have ears to hear.

Van Gogh – “All nature seems to speak. As for me, I cannot understand why everybody does not see it or feel it; nature or God does it for everyone who has eyes and ears and a heart to understand.”

Solomon was such a student. Jewish historian Josephus tells us that “he spake a parable upon every sort of tree, from the hyssop to the cedar and in like manner also about beasts, about all sorts of living creatures, whether upon the earth, or in the seas, or in the air; for he was not unacquainted with any of their natures, nor omitted inquiries about them, but described them like a philosopher.”

Where did Solomon get his eyes and his ears and his heart to understand? God appeared to him in a dream at Gibeon, telling him to ask for whatever he wanted. When he asked for “a discerning heart” so he could have the wisdom to rule God’s people, it pleased God so much He granted the request beyond Solomon’s wildest dreams. It’s interesting to note that the word discerning comes from the Hebrew word that means “to hear.” A “hearing heart” is what Solomon literally asked for, a heart that could look at an overgrown field or an ant at work and see windows of the soul. That same word is used in the great commandment, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” The first step toward being wise is also the first step in loving God, and that is being attentive to the words He has spoken. We need to be attentive to what God might be saying through Nature.

The character of Interpreter in Pilgrim’s Progress (p. 195) uses nature to teach lessons – here’s an excerpt:

“He had them into another room, where was a Hen and chickens, and bid them observe a while. So one of the chickens went to the trough to drink, and every time she drank, she lifted up her head, and her eyes towards Heaven. See, said he, what this little chicken doth, and learn of her to acknowledge whence your mercies come, by receiving them with looking up. Yet again, said he, observe and look; so they gave heed, and perceived that the Hen did walk in a four-fold method towards her chickens.

She had a common call, and that she hath all day long.
She had a special call, and that she had but sometimes.
She had a brooding note. And,
She had an out-cry.

Now, said he, compare this Hen to your King, and these chickens to his obedient ones. For answerable to her, himself has his methods, which he walketh in towards his People; by his common Call, he gives nothing; by his special Call, he always has something to give; he has also a brooding Voice, for them that are under his Wing; and he has an Out-cry, to give the alarm when he seeth the enemy come.”

p. 240 “Christ Plays in ten Thousand Places” (Eugene Peterson) – “We encounter ascending levels of complexity as we proceed from creation to history to community . . . Creation itself is the study of a lifetime. Poets and scientists keep calling our attention to details that we are always overlooking. We have noted how the relative stability and ‘there-ness’ of creation opens up into the ‘here-ness’ of history marked by huge interpenetrating movements and events that develop exponentially as men and women act and speak, make love and war, explore and invent, buy and sell, have families and form governments.”

Charles Spurgeon’s Morning to Morning devotion – August 15^th – (Genesis 24:63) “In the outdoors we see numerous things upon which to meditate, from tall cedars to small hyssop plants, from soaring eagles above to chirping grasshoppers below, and from the blue expanse of heaven to a drop of dew. All these things are ripe with teaching, and when our eyes are divinely opened, that teaching flashes into our minds far more vividly than knowledge from written books. The inside of our house is not nearly as healthy, pleasant, thought provoking, or inspiring as the great outdoors. We should think of nothing in creation as common or unclean, but recognize that all created things point to their Maker. Then the outdoors will immediately become a holy place to us.

Isaac . . . chose [to meditate at] the time when sunset is drawing its veil over the day, the perfect time for calming the soul and allowing the earthborn cares to yield to the joys of heavenly communion. The glory of the setting sun and solemnity of approaching night awaken our sense of wonder and awe.

If your schedule allows it, dear reader, it would be quite worthwhile for you to spend an hour walking outdoors this evening. But if you are in the city, the Lord is there as well, and will meet you in your room or even in the crowded street. Wherever you may be, let your heart go forth to meet with Him today.”

When we look at a reflection of the sun in a rippling pool of water, the light breaks into a prism of colors; behind the prism is a veil of clouds; behind the clouds is the sun. If we look up to see this beautiful image in the sky, even through the clouds, even through the filter of the earth’s atmosphere, even through a distance of ninety-three million miles, our eyes can’t take in the sun without having to shield them with our hands. We can only take it in looking at the reflection in a six-inch margin of water, and then, only when veiled by the clouds and rippled by the wind. We cannot look at the sun in its noonday glory; only in the early mornings or late afternoons when it is filtered through the dust on the horizon, mirrored off the ripples of a pond, reflected off the face of the moon or the faces of the rest of creation that borrow its light.

Neither can we see God in His glory. It must be veiled or it would blind us. And so He comes to us in ways that our senses can take Him in without injury, which is always less than He is. This helps us to understand why God speaks to us in the ways He sometimes does.

Many expositors maintain that the main theme in the book of Job is the mystery of suffering. Job himself had no solution to this problem and desperately appealed to God to provide one while steadfastly maintaining his faith in God and in an ultimate resolution. So, then, what is God’s solution? When he finally enters the dialogue himself, what does He say about this vexing problem of human suffering? Amazingly, God says nothing about it! What He does talk about is . . . well, let’s read it for ourselves. Let’s read Job 38:1 – 18 (NLT) – “Then the Lord answered Job from the whirlwind: “Who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorant words? Brace yourself like a man, because I have some questions for you, and you must answer them. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much. Who determined its dimensions and stretched out the surveying line? What supports its foundations, and who laid its cornerstone as the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? “Who kept the sea inside its boundaries as it burst from the womb, and as I clothed it with clouds and wrapped it in thick darkness? For I locked it behind barred gates, limiting its shores. I said, ‘This far and no farther will you come. Here your proud waves must stop!’ “Have you ever commanded the morning to appear and caused the dawn to rise in the east? Have you made daylight spread to the ends of the earth, to bring an end to the night’s wickedness? As the light approaches, the earth takes shape like clay pressed beneath a seal; it is robed in brilliant colors. The light disturbs the wicked and stops the arm that is raised in violence. “Have you explored the springs from which the seas come? Have you explored their depths? Do you know where the gates of death are located? Have you seen the gates of utter gloom? Do you realize the extent of the earth? Tell me about it if you know!”

God talks to Job about creation – a lot – through to the end of chapter 41! Henry Morris says that this leads us to the remarkable conclusion that a correct and complete doctrine of creation is the answer to all the problems that burden this present hurting world. Hearing God speak through windows of nature is a key to effective and victorious living under circumstances of pain and sorrow.

Psalm 46 (NLT) – “God is our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble. So we will not fear when earthquakes come and the mountains crumble into the sea. Let the oceans roar and foam. Let the mountains tremble as the waters surge! A river brings joy to the city of our God, the sacred home of the Most High. God dwells in that city; it cannot be destroyed. From the very break of day, God will protect it. http://bible.cc/psalms/46-6.htm The nations are in chaos, and their kingdoms crumble! God’s voice thunders, and the earth melts! The Lord of Heaven’s Armies is here among us; the God of Israel is our fortress. Come, see the glorious works of the Lord: See how he brings destruction upon the world. He causes wars to end throughout the earth. He breaks the bow and snaps the spear; he burns the shields with fire. “Be still, and know that I am God! I will be honored by every nation. I will be honored throughout the world.” The Lord of Heaven’s Armies is here among us; the God of Israel is our fortress.”

In A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean’s father, a Presbyterian minister, is sitting on the banks of the river, reading the gospel of John while his sons are fishing. When Norman comes over to where he is sitting, the father pensively remarks: “In the part I was reading it says the Word was in the beginning, and that’s right. I used to think water was first, but if you listen carefully you will hear that the words are underneath the water.”

Underneath the Creation are the words of life, “Let there be . . . and there was.” Underneath the Exodus are words of deliverance. Underneath the wilderness, words of judgment. It was the word of God that brought forth manna. By a word of God, Israel was led out of the wilderness, and by another word, Moses was left behind. God’s words are underneath everything. And if you listen carefully, you will hear them.

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it,” wrote Maclean as he was concluding his book. What the psalmist writes is a little different. Eventually, all things merge into oblivion. All things on earth, that is. But in heaven stands the city of God, and a river runs through it. One of the things the river offers the city is its gladness.

The world we live in, from the small words that are my life and yours to the great wide world we all live in, will one day come crumbling in around us. In the midst of that upheaval, the psalmist says: “Be still, and know that I am God.”

It is not in many of our natures to be still. We bite our nails, we fidget, we talk to ourselves all day long with lists of things to do, we run from one appointment to the next. 29% of Americans have been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, and it is the most common cause of disability in the workplace. We desperately need to learn how to be still on the inside, and to know God.

Psalm 46 can help us to be still. So can a river. And in helping us to be still, they helps us to realize who God is. The Lord Almighty, He is the one who is with us. The God of Jacob, He is the one who is our fortress. He sees all that shakes . . . and remains unshaken. He sits above all that changes . . . and remains unchanged. In our anxiety we tend to forget that. The river helps us remember. He sits enthroned in the city of God, and a river runs through it. A river brings joy to the city of our God.

A prayer for learning – “Help me, O God, to learn the beautiful language of Nature so I too might be able to read the manuscripts of God. Give me a hearing heart so I might understand what I read, and a humble heart so I might learn even from the ants how better to live my life . . .”

Part 2 – Quotations for reflection

Genesis 1:1 (NIV) – “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

Henry Morris – “The goodness of God is evidenced in the daily victory of light over darkness, the annual return of spring after winter, and especially the oft-repeated triumph of life over death.”

Francis Bacon – “God never wrought miracles to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it.”

Aeschylus – “The power that holds the sky’s majesty wins our worship.”

Pascal – “Instead of complaining that God had hidden Himself, you will give Him thanks for having revealed so much of Himself.”

St. Anthony of Padua – “Our thoughts ought instinctively to fly upwards from animals, men, and natural objects to their Creator. If things created are so full of loveliness, how resplendent with beauty must be he who made them! The wisdom of the Worker is apparent in His handiwork.”

Psalm 24:1 – “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to him.”

George Eliot – “Animals are such agreeable friends – they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.”

St. Augustine of Hippo – “Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked.”

Henry Ward Beecher – “Beauty may be said to be God’s trademark in creation.”

Robert Browning – “O world, as God has made it! All is beauty.”

St. Francis of Assisi – “God is beauty.”

St. John of the Cross – “God passes through the thicket to the world, and wherever his glance falls he turns all things to beauty.”

Charles Kingsley – “Beauty is God’s handwriting. Welcome it in every fair face, every fair day, every fair flower.”

Isaiah 40:26, 28 – “Look up into the heavens. Who created all the stars? He brings them out like an army, one after another, calling each by its name. Because of his great power and incomparable strength, not a single one is missing . . . Have you never heard? Have you never understood? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of all the earth. He never grows weak or weary. No one can measure the depths of his understanding.”

George MacDonald – “God’s fingers can touch nothing but to mold it into loveliness.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe – “In all ranks of life the human heart yearns for the beautiful; and the beautiful things that God makes are his gifts to all alike.”

St. Augustine of Hippo – “Thus does the world forget You, its Creator, and falls in love with what You have created instead of with You.”

Sir Thomas Pope Blount – “Every flower of the field, every fiber of a plant, every particle of an insect, carries with it the impress of its Maker, and can – if duly considered – read us lectures on ethics or divinity.”

Frank Borman – “The more we learn about the wonders of our universe, the more clearly we are going to perceive the hand of God.”

Romans 8:19 – 23 – “For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning – “Earth’s crammed with heaven. And every common bush afire with God.”

Thomas Carlyle – “The universe is but one vast symbol of God.”

Oswald Chambers – “Think of the number of trees and blades of grass and flowers, the extravagant wealth of beauty no one ever sees! Think of the sunrises and sunsets we never look at! God is lavish in every degree.”

Clement of Alexandria – “The world is the first Bible that God made for the instruction of man.”

Edwin G. Conklin – “The probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the probability of the unabridged dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing shop.”

Colossians 1:15 – 16 – “Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation, for through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see—such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world. Everything was created through him and for him.”

Fyodor Dostoevsky – “Love all God’s creation, the whole of it, love every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light! Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. And once you have perceived it, you will be able to comprehend it ceaselessly more and more every day.”

Charles Gore – “Nature is a first volume, in itself incomplete, and demanding a second volume, which is Christ.”

Martin Luther – “God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees, and flowers, and clouds, and stars.”

Charles Henry Parkhurst – “Laws of nature are God’s thoughts thinking themselves out in the orbits and the tides.”

Louis Pasteur – “Posterity will some day laugh at the foolishness of modern materialistic philosophy. The more I study nature, the more I am amazed at the Creator.”

Psalm 67:5 – 6 – “May the nations praise you, O God. Yes, may all the nations praise you. Then the earth will yield its harvests, and God, our God, will richly bless us.”

Gerard von Rad – “Creation not only exists, it also discharges truth . . . Wisdom requires a surrender, verging on the mystical, of a person to the glory of existence.”

Jonathan Swift – “That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge – “Earth with her thousand voices praises God.”

St. Augustine of Hippo – “Light, even though it passes through pollution, is not polluted.”

Graham Cooke – “We have lost the capacity to be astonished by God.”

Psalm 19:1 – 4 – “The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known. They speak without a sound or word; their voice is never heard. Yet their message has gone throughout the earth, and their words to all the world.”

Part 3 – Meditation on God’s character as revealed through nature

(hand out samples of leaves / flowers / etc.)

“Creation Calls” (Brian Doerksen, from “Light the Fire Again”)

I have felt the wind blow,
Whispering your name
I have seen your tears fall,
When I watch the rain.

How could I say there is no God?
When all around creation calls!!
A singing bird, a mighty tree,
The vast expanse of open sea

Gazing at a bird in flight,
Soaring through the air.
Lying down beneath the stars,
I feel your presence there.
I love to stand at ocean shore
And feel the thundering breakers roar,
To walk through golden fields of grain
With endless bloom horizons fray.
Listening to a river run,
Watering the Earth.
Fragrance of a rose in bloom,
A newborns cry at birth.

I love to stand at ocean shore
And feel the thundering breakers roar,
To walk through golden fields of grain
With endless bloom horizons fray

I believe . . .

I believe just like a child

Windows of Nature – August 21st, 2011

Part 1 – God speaks to us through Windows of Nature

Job 38:1 – 18 (NLT) – “Then the Lord answered Job from the whirlwind: “Who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorant words? Brace yourself like a man, because I have some questions for you, and you must answer them. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much. Who determined its dimensions and stretched out the surveying line? What supports its foundations, and who laid its cornerstone as the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? “Who kept the sea inside its boundaries as it burst from the womb, and as I clothed it with clouds and wrapped it in thick darkness? For I locked it behind barred gates, limiting its shores. I said, ‘This far and no farther will you come. Here your proud waves must stop!’ “Have you ever commanded the morning to appear and caused the dawn to rise in the east? Have you made daylight spread to the ends of the earth, to bring an end to the night’s wickedness? As the light approaches, the earth takes shape like clay pressed beneath a seal; it is robed in brilliant colors. The light disturbs the wicked and stops the arm that is raised in violence. “Have you explored the springs from which the seas come? Have you explored their depths? Do you know where the gates of death are located? Have you seen the gates of utter gloom? Do you realize the extent of the earth? Tell me about it if you know!”