Seeing Creation

“For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”  1 Corinthians 15:22

If you are a regular reader of this blog you know that a few weeks ago I introduced you to a delightful website where you could view a live cam on an active eagle’s nest.  Yesterday I was saddened to learn that the mother eagle at this nest had been hit by an airplane and killed.  This eagle had been taking wonderful care of her three eaglets and had touched the hearts of thousands of people across the globe.  This horrible accident was just another reminder how fragile life is and how death is an inevitable part of life.

The picture you see above was taken on the hill in my back yard.  This skull was here when we moved into our house three years ago.  I elected not to remove it.  Why?  I felt it would serve as a useful reminder to me of my own mortality.  A lot of us live our lives as though we will never die.  The fact is we all will one day die unless Christ returns first.  This cow’s skull makes me mindful that I should live my life with the end in mind.  It makes me want to do all I can to make life meaningful while I have the chance. 

There are certainly a lot of reminders in nature that death is a part of life.  When we look around us we see dead animals on the side of the road, trees that have died, and plants that have perished.  In God’s wonderful economy death actually plays a key role in the giving of life.  Plants and animals return to the soil and make it more fertile.  Through death life goes on.

Some feel that this same cycle is what we face as humans.  We live, we die and then we return to dust.  That’s it.  The Scriptures, however, point to something else.  Here too we learn that death leads to life but the difference is that in God’s hands we are restored to life ourselves.  This, of course, is the message we celebrated a few days ago on Easter.  The consistent testimony of the New Testament is that life goes on for those who follow Christ.  For these death becomes the entranceway to life on a far higher level than that we experience here on earth.  (What happens to other living creatures is not clearly noted in the Scriptures; I can only hope that they too are a part of the “new creation” the Bible talks about.)  

When the words are paired we usually see them in this order—life and death.  God would have us reverse this order and see that life follows death.  Obviously we live now and are meant to make the most of life here on earth.  We do this by loving God, our neighbors, ourselves and God’s Creation but it is comforting to know that this life is not all that we have.  There is more—so much more—to come once we pass through death to life and the home God prepares for us even now.

–Chuck

(The bottom picture was taken at Joshua Tree National Park.  The shadows on the rocks remind me of the words found in Psalm 23: “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil,  for you are with me.”)

When I went to Hawaii a couple of weeks ago my dream was to see hot lava flowing into the ocean.  I have seen some incredible images of this and was hoping to capture a few of my own.  Unfortunately, the Kilauea volcano was not active enough for lava to be flowing into the ocean, nor was it close enough to walk to.  I decided to do the next best thing; I took a doors off helicopter flight over the volcano.  From the helicopter I was able look down into the mouth of the crater and see red hot molten lava flowing.  It was an incredibly moving sight.

Hawaii pretty much owes its existence to volcanoes.  Amazingly enough, the islands continue to be shaped by volcanic activity.  Also, south of the Big Island, deep beneath the water, a new island (Lo’ihi) is in the process of being formed.  All of this is the result of a great force at work deep beneath the earth’s surface.  It would be hard to imagine a greater force than that found there.

There is, however, a much greater power and it is the power that Christians all around the world celebrate today.  This is Easter Sunday—that holiest of days when we recall that though Jesus was crucified on Good Friday he rose from the grave that first Easter morning.    Death, which many would have seen as being the greatest force in the world, was defeated that day.  Furthermore, the power of sin was conquered as Christ rose from the tomb.  It truly was the greatest display of power the world has ever seen or experienced.

Today that same power is made available to us through the Risen Christ.  It is something you and I can know firsthand.  In Philippians 3:10-11 the apostle Paul wrote of his desire to experience this power.  He said, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain the resurrection from the dead.”   The power of Christ’s resurrection is available to all believers today.  It is, however, a power that must be tapped. 

In Hawaii you can visit places where the steam from beneath the earth is harnessed to make power.  As Christians we must harness the resurrection power of God too.  We do so by humbly asking for it and by dying to self so that Christ can live in and through us.  We must get to the point where we can say with Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.  The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)

I doubt that any of us have begun to realize the full potential of Christ’s resurrection power in our lives but it is there for us nonetheless.  On this Easter Sunday I give thanks for that power and for the difference it has made, and is making, in my life.  Happy Easter!

–Chuck

Today two days that are very important to me happen to fall on the same day—Good Friday and Earth Day.  I’m sure most people will not draw a connection between the two but there most certainly is one.  In fact, for Christians there are many things that connect Good Friday and Earth Day.  For starters, the one whose death on the Cross we remember today is also the one the Bible tells us was responsible for creating the earth.  The apostle Paul referred to Jesus as “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth…” (Colossians 1:15-16)

The Bible also connects Jesus and the earth when we are told “God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)  The basis for God’s incredible gift of Jesus was His love for the world.  This includes not just humans but all of His Creation.  It is clear from Jesus’ own teachings that he, too, love this planet we call home.

In our pride we tend to think of the salvation made possible on Good Friday as being intended only for humans.  The Bible says something very different.  What Jesus did on the Cross that first Good Friday affects all of Creation.  Paul says in the Book of Romans that Creation shares our same hope.  He writes: “The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.  For 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.” (8:18-21)

People read the Book of Revelation and get all excited about the “streets of gold” in heaven.  They sometimes fail to see that we are promised in these same pages “a new heaven and a new earth.”  (Revelation 21:1)  The earth will also be glorified and renewed.  The One who died on the cross on Good Friday makes “all things new.”

Considering the fact that Jesus’ death on the Cross would benefit all of Creation is it any wonder that on that first Good Friday “darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, for the sun stopped shining?” (Luke 23:44-45)  Even the earth was humbled by what Jesus did for us on the Cross. 

I’m glad that this year Earth Day and Good Friday fall on the same day.  It gives us a chance to pause and remember some very important truths—truths we might not reflect on or connect otherwise.  I give thanks for my wonderful Savior and for the truth that his redemptive act on the Cross was for all the world and that this includes me too.

–Chuck

(I took the top image several years ago at Hensley Settlement in the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park.  The bottom image was taken last week of the Hana Coast from the Hana Highway in Hawaii.)

Tomorrow is the birthday of one of my heroes—John Muir.  Muir was born April 21, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland.  He would eventually migrate with his family to the United States and become an early advocate for environmental stewardship.  I have long enjoyed reading Muir’s books and dreamed of what it must have been like to walk mountain trails with him.  His spiritual insight into nature has been a great source of inspiration to me.  In honor of John Muir’s 173^rd birthday I would like to share the following passages from his unpublished journals.

“And thus we find in the fields of Nature no place that is blank or barren; every spot on land or sea is covered with harvests, and these harvests are always ripe and ready to be gathered, and no toiler is ever underpaid.  Not in these fields, God’s wilds, will you ever hear the sad moan of disappointment, ‘All is vanity.’  No, we are overpaid a thousand times for all our toil, and a single day in so divine an atmosphere of beauty and love would be well worth living for, and at its close, should death come, without any hope of another life, we could still say, ‘Thank you, God for the glorious gift!’ and pass on.”

“All the wild world is beautiful, and it matters but little where we go, to highlands or lowlands, woods or plains, on the sea or land or down among the crystals of waves or high in a balloon in the sky; through all the climates, hot or cold, storms and calms, everywhere and always we are in God’s eternal beauty and love.  So universally true is this, the spot where we chance to be always seems the best, and it requires a distinct effort of the will to get oneself in motion or a change of place.”

Other than Christ himself, I am not sure there has ever been a better guide to “seeing Creation” than John Muir.  I give thanks for his life, writings and example.  I hope many will follow in his steps.

–Chuck

(I took the two images above in John Muir’s beloved Yosemite Valley.)

Today is Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week.  In the days to come Christians everywhere will be reflecting on the events of the week that led up to Jesus’ crucifixion.  In Matthew’s Gospel we find one of Jesus’ sayings from this week that contains a nature reference.   It may not be as familiar to most people as his injunction to “consider the lilies” or “look at the birds” but it is just as powerful and moving.  It is a passage that came to my mind this past Thursday while visiting the Iao Valley in Hawaii.  On the way to one of the viewpoints of the Iao Needle I saw a mother hen shielding her chicks beneath her.  The mother hen’s care for her little ones reminded me of Jesus’ words spoken about the city where he would shortly meet his death.  He said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.”  (Mt. 23:37)

In this passage we see Christ’s frustration with the people of Jerusalem.  He wanted them to accept him and his Father’s love but they were unwilling.  Time and time again they had proven unreceptive to God’s overtures of love.  Still, Christ reaches out to them.  He longs to draw them to himself, just like a mother hen draws her chicks.  He wanted to care for them, to protect them, to love them. 

Jesus’ use of the mother hen image is a wonderful reminder of God’s love for all of us.  Even though we traditionally speak of God as “Father,” it is a mother’s love that is revealed here.  It is also a love that would seem unjustified.  The people Christ was reaching out to were known to “kill the prophets and stone those sent to you.”  We would say they were unworthy of Christ’s love, that they didn’t deserve it.  And the truth be known, they didn’t deserve it.  But neither do we. 

All of the events of Holy Week compel us to acknowledge that none of us are worthy recipients of God’s love but He loves us nonetheless.  This is why we refer to Jesus’ story as the “gospel” or “good news.”  Despite all of our failures and shortcomings, God loves us still.  He is like a mother hen who longs to draw us all close to her side.  How foolish, how insane, we must be to not allow Him to do just that.  A baby chick should be close to its mother.  That is where he or she is safe.  We, likewise, should be close to our Creator and Savior.  That is where we will find safety.  That is where we will find comfort.  That is where we will find love.

–Chuck

A couple of weeks ago I shared with you about my discovering the poetry of Mary Oliver. In addition to ordering a number of her volumes of poems I also purchased a book by Thomas W. Mann called God of Dirt: Mary Oliver and the Other Book of God. This book not only does an excellent job of discussing the spiritual side of Oliver’s poetry, it also has much to say in general about the role of creation in spirituality.

In his book Mann says “The first order of a spiritual attitude toward the world is simply to pay attention to our place in it.” He goes on to add, “This requirement may seem so obvious that it is needless to say, but, in fact, most of us do not pay attention to the natural world in our everyday lives.” Mann points out that our failure to take time to pay attention to the world around us “produces the incapability of experiencing an epiphany.” He next quotes a passage from one of Mary Oliver’s poems: “Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from one boot to another–why don’t you get going? For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees. And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money, I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.”  

Mann explains that if we are to experience God in nature we will have to learn to be idle; he writes, “Paying attention requires idleness, and far from being the Devil’s workshop, this is sacred, Sabbath time.” This is something I needed to hear. I tend to avoid idleness like the plague. It’s hard for me to be still and yet God says to us through the Psalmist, “Be still and know that I am God.” (46:10) My fast paced life and also my fast paced photography (Rob Sheppard says I remind him of a jackrabbit taking pictures) no doubt limits the opportunities God is given to speak to me through His “other book”–His Creation.

I must somehow learn to embrace idleness and make it what it should be, “sacred, Sabbath time.” It won’t be easy but because I hate the thought of missing out on God’s revelation just because I’m too busy to pay attention I’m going to give it a try.

–Chuck

 (I took the two images above yesterday on the Hana Highway on Maui, Hawaii.)