Seeing Creation

When Oprah Winfrey speaks the world listens.  Well, maybe not everyone but she is definitely very popular and someone that carries a lot of influence.  Through her television shows and magazine she has touched millions of lives.  I’ve never read her magazine but my younger sister does and Betty sent me a couple of quotes earlier this week from the August 2013 issue of “O”.  In a section called “What I Know for Sure” Oprah writes: “Every night at sunset, friends and neighbors gather on my front porch to watch what we call the greatest show on Earth. We take pictures and compare the color variations of each magnificent light show as the sun dips below the horizon.”   She goes on to say, “For me, nature is one great big wow after another, and sometimes its smallest offerings are the ones that open my soul to its splendor.”

There are a number of things I like about this excerpt.  For starters, I think it’s wonderful that someone who has as much money and resources as Oprah that for her evening entertainment she still turns to the free gift of sunsets, the “greatest show on Earth.”  Here we are reminded that much of God’s Creation is there for everyone to enjoy, no matter how rich or poor they are, the color of their skin, or what country they may reside in.  Everybody can enjoy sunrises and sunsets, beautiful cloud formations, the birds of the air, trees, etc.   God’s “other Book,” like God’s grace, is there for all to enjoy and benefit from.

I also appreciate the fact that Oprah still sees nature as “one great big wow after another.”  I do not know Oprah personally but it would seem from what she says here that she has been able to maintain a certain degree of childlikeness after all these years.  Unlike a lot of adults, she is still able to see the Creation through the eyes of a child.  This is a positive characteristic.  You may recall that Jesus once said, “Unless you become like children you cannot enter the kingdom of  heaven.”  (Matthew 18:3)  A childlike spirit (not to be confused with childishness) is an invaluable trait.  If we fail to look at the world through childlike eyes we will miss much of its wonder and we may well miss God as well.

Finally, I applaud Oprah for recognizing that sometimes it’s the “smallest offerings” in nature that open our soul to its splendor.  Sunsets, mountains, and the ocean tend to wow everyone but not so the little things.  We are prone to forget that the cliche “big things can come in small packages” is true.  If we approach God’s gifts in Creation with an open mind and the childlikeness noted above we may just find our souls also moved by the tiny flower you can barely see with the naked eye, the honey bee that is carrying pollen from the flower to the hive, the dragonfly perched upon a stem, the orb weaver spinning its web, or a million other things.  All of God’s gifts and revelations do not come in big packages.  It would certainly pay us to keep that in mind.

Having written all of this I find myself being thankful that people do listen when Oprah speaks.  I hope lots of people read her words in the latest issue of “O” and that it will help them see the Creation in a new way.  Better still, I hope that it will help them see the Creator in a new way.

–Chuck

(I took all of the images shown above near my home in Henderson, Kentucky.  I’d like to say a special thank you to my sister, Betty Summers Stewart, for sharing the words from Oprah with me and also for catching all my typos on this blog site.)