God and Nature

Plain is the beauty before us!

Could this beauty be for us?

Andrew Peterson 

"The Magic Hour"

Over the past 6 or 7 years the following ideas have been presented to me and I have found them to be true:

1. All people desire happiness and seek pleasure.
2. This is a good thing to do.
3. There is joy and happiness and pleasure that is the best to have, of highest quality and of greatest quantity.
4. It can be found!

Also for the past 6 or 7 years Julia and I have really enjoyed nature. Seeing spectacular things and going remote and quiet places is something that we both value (to varying degrees). What we see and do while out-of-doors is a great source of happiness to us. What about God? Why do I enjoy nature so much and how God is involved with the pleasure I find there?

There have been many helps along the way. Some are pastors, some authors, and some musicians. And they all help point us towards what is true about the world.

It's clear in the Bible that God had a purpose in creating the natural world.

And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;

the whole earth is full of his glory!”

(Isaiah 6:3 ESV)

(Especially the atmosphere)

The heavens declare the glory of God,

and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

Day to day pours out speech,

and night to night reveals knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words,

whose voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out through all the earth,

and their words to the end of the world.

In them he has set a tent for the sun,

(Psalm 19:1-4 ESV)

With that in mind, Julia and I have really enjoyed ourselves outdoors lately.

Almost...

Aaalllllmoooosssst...

Perfect.

Almost.

Aaalllllmoooosssst...

Perfect.

A song that has pointed our minds towards enjoying the beauty of God on display in nature is How Great Thou Art. Living in Alaska seemed to bring the meaning of this song to life. So did getting caught hiking in a thunderstorm.

Tough not to be in awe of the natural world up in the Great White North. 

Lately we have also found that the Wasatch Mountains produce their own kind of awe. 

Wasatch Summer

Wasatch Fall

Wasatch Winter

Canyons in Canyonlands NP are something to behold.

So are canyons in Arches NP.

Yes they do.

In the event of a sprained ankle, read a book.

And lately, with the help of songs sung and words written, the depth of our enjoyment has reached places I could never have imagined. C.S. Lewis and his address called "The Weight of Glory" and a few more songs provide helpful context for the pleasure we've had in exploring Utah and Alaska.

I spent much of the summer surrounded by the beauty of the high desert. But...

The books or the music in which we though the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things - the beauty, the memory of our own past - are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country have never yet visited. 

Glory suggests two ideas to me, of which one seems wicked and the other ridiculous. Either glory means to me fame, or it means luminosity....But not fame conferred by our fellow creatures - fame with God, approval or (I might say) "appreciation" by God....I am not forgetting how horribly this most innocent desire is parodied in our human ambitions, or how very quickly, in my own experience, the lawful pleasure of praise from those whom it was my duty to please turns into the deadly poison of self-admiration. But I thought I could detect a moment - a very, very short moment - before this happened, during which the satisfaction of having pleased those whom I rightly loved and rightly feared was pure. And that is enough to raise our thoughts to what may happen when the redeemed soul, beyond all hope and nearly beyond belief, learns at last that she has pleased Him whom she was created to please. 

Glory, as Christianity teaches me to hope for it, turns out to satisfy my original desire and indeed to reveal an element in that desire which I had not noticed. By ceasing for a moment to consider my own wants I have begun to learn better what I really wanted.

Kachemak Bay.

Grewingk Glacier and Glacier Lake.

The natural world does more than simply show off the creative power of God or display His beauty. C.S. Lewis points towards another beautiful purpose of God we can take hold of through our interaction with the created world.

We usually notice [our spiritual longings] just as the moment of vision dies away, as the music ends, or as the landscape loses the celestial light....For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance.

Photo by Jinny.

Getting closer to Grewingk Glacier. 

And this brings me to the other sense of glory - glory as brightness, splendour, luminosity. We are to shine as the sun, we are to be given the Morning Star. I think I begin to see what it means. In one way, of course, God has given us the Morning Star already: you can go and enjoy the gift on many fine mornings if you get up early enough. What more, you may ask, do we want? 

Under Worthington Glacier. Photo by Jinny.

Ah, but we want so much more - something the books on aesthetics take little notice of. But the poets and the mythologies know all about it. We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words - to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.

Mt. Blackburn from above the Bonanza Mine.

At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.

The Alaska Range and Summit Lake. 

When human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch.

The Gulkana Glacier.

For you must not think that I am putting forward any heathen fancy of being absorbed into Nature. Nature is mortal; we shall outlive her. When all the suns and nebulae have passed away, each one of you will still be alive. Nature is only the image, the symbol; but it is the symbol Scripture invites me to use. We are summoned to pass in through Nature, beyond her, into that splendour which she fitfully reflects. 

On the Gulkana Glacier. "Well, mighty good water if I don't die!"

Southern Utah is incredible. The Magic Hour by Andrew Peterson was ringing in my ears as we wandered Zion National Park and southern Utah.

La Verkin Creek

A view from Angel's Landing.

A view of Angle's Landing.

East Rim Trail.

This is my Father's world 

and to my listening ears

All nature sings and 'round me rings

the music of the spheres.

This is my Father's world 

He shines in all that's fair

In the rustling grass I hear Him pass

He speaks to me everywhere

Towards Zion NP.

Looking at Canyonlands through Looking Glass Rock.

Nature points to a beautiful God. But the glory of nature pales in comparison to the glory of God. It's a shadow, a beautiful shadow. But only a pointer to a more beautiful reality.

But nature also brings to light a desire. And God satisfies that desire.

These longings and desires "to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it," are satisfied in a beautiful God on a wonderful cross. He has presented Himself to us in Jesus. He has made it possible for us to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.

There is the source of joy and happiness and pleasure that is most satisfying. The source lasts forever and it offers the most perfect kind of satisfaction. There is a beautiful truth the enjoyment of nature is pointing to. "Some day, God willing, we shall get in." The New Testament rustlings tell of Jesus satisfying our every longing for pleasure. He brings us in by taking our sin and providing us with righteousness we have not mustered up on our own. And we cannot. 

In nature God is calling to us to go after happiness and joy and righteousness. He asks us to go after pleasure by doing what the natural world has been doing since its creation. We are compelled to join the created world in doing what God created us to do. He intends for us to glorify Him by enjoying Him forever. Seek pleasure by glorifying God and we will be satisfied!

Some of the most paradigm smashing words about the pursuit of pleasure are in the first paragraph of "The Weight of Glory."

The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

I hope that nature is one thing that keeps you from being too easily pleased.