Seeing Creation

“Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.”  Psalm 150:6

“Praise God from whom all blessings flow; praise Him all creatures here below.” (from  The Doxology)

In the book I wrote about on Sunday, Tending to Eden, the author allowed several leading voices in Creation Care to write small essays.  One of these was written by Tony Campolo and is called “Creation Care and Worship.”  In this brief essay Campolo argues that “we humans are not the only ones called to worship God.” He believes that the Bible teaches that all of God’s Creation was created to offer its Creator worship and praise.  There are certainly numerous biblical passages that back this claim.  Psalm 148, for example, says “Praise the Lord from the earth, you great sea creatures and all ocean depths, lightning and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds that do his bidding, you mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals and all cattle, small creatures and flying birds…”

If we understand that all things were created to worship God it will help us see Creation in a new light.  Perhaps it will even come to help us appreciate more our fellow worshippers and create within us a desire to learn more about them.  Recognizing that everything on earth was made to worship God will also affect how we treat the earth and its creatures.  We will do all we can to help preserve all species for, as Campolo says, whenever another species is made extinct “we have silenced a special voice of praise to the Almighty.”

In the final paragraph of his essay Campolo says, “To interfere with worship is blasphemy.  Thus, the obliteration of the environment has blasphemous dimensions to it.  Considering what we have done to nature, we need to repent, because we have hindered nature’s glorification of the God who created all things in heaven and on earth to praise his name.”

We can and should avoid blasphemy by being good stewards of God’s Creation and by making sure that we add our own voice in offering praise to God.  When all of Creation offers its praise to God what a beautiful song it must be!

–Chuck

(This cardinal and pika I photographed are just two examples of  those who join us in praising God.)

“It is good to praise the Lord and make music to your name, O Most High.” Psalms 92:1

It probably won’t come as much of a surprise to you that many of my favorite hymns are songs that praise God as Creator.  Some of my personal favorites are “This is My Father’s World,”  “Great is Thy Faithfulness,”  “For the Beauty of the Earth,”  “Worthy of Worship,” and “Morning Has Broken.”  Some of my favorite contemporary Christian songs are likewise focused on God as Creator.  These include “Indescribable” and “All Things Well,” both by Chris Tomlin, and “Creation Song” by Fernando Ortega.

This past week I was reminded of the importance of singing songs connecting God and Creation.  Matthew Sleeth, in his newest book, The Gospel According to the Earth, has a chapter on the Book of Psalms he calls “The First Environmental Music.”  In this chapter he claims that singing songs connecting God and Creation can actually make a difference in how we look at and treat the earth.  He says, “Singing songs in praise of creation inspires us to appreciate God’s gifts.  Appreciation leads to a desire to be better stewards.  Better stewardship at home, church, work, and beyond leads to less waste.  Less waste demonstrates respect for God, resulting in a cleaner, more beautiful world in which to sing his praises.”  I like Sleeth’s thinking, as well as his conclusion to the chapter: “With God as the conductor, maybe music can also save a planet.”

A couple of days ago I got my latest edition of Orion in the mail.  This is an environmental magazine that Rob Sheppard introduced me to last year.  In it there is an article by Erik Reese about how a group of country musicians are using their talents to combat mountaintop removal in Appalachia.  Toward the end of the article Reese writes: “Can music save mountains?  Certainly not by itself.  But there is a reason Walter Pater said that all art aspires toward the condition of music.  More than any other art form, music can connect the head to the heart, the self to the social whole.  After all, the fiddle tunes that began in the mountains of Appalachia were never meant for an ‘audience.’  That music was intended to draw people together, to involve them in something communal and collective.  Now a new collective conscience must be mobilized in order to preserve the mountains where this music was born.”

It would seem that there truly is a connection between music and Creation Care—a connection worth noting and celebrating.  God told Job that when He created the world “the morning stars sang together.” (38:7)  It seems to me that it’s now our job to continue the song.

–Chuck

(The images above were taken at a lavender field near Port Angeles, Washington.)

I have long been drawn to the life and teachings of Francis of Assisi.  Yesterday I took some time to listen to a lecture on Francis.  It was noted in this lecture that Francis believed that nature was a trail that led to God.  His thinking was that like following footprints in the snow can lead you to the one who left the prints, if you follow the footsteps of Creation they will lead you to the Creator.  This line of thinking is consistent with what the apostle Paul wrote in Romans 1:20:  “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

Francis’ belief that Creation led one to God no doubt contributed to his well-known love of nature.  It is what enabled him to write the Canticle of Brother Sun.  In this hymn Francis offers supreme praise to the “Most High, all powerful, good Lord.”  He then goes on to say, “Praised be You, My Lord, with all your creatures, especially Brother Sun…”  This is followed by praise for Sister Moon, Brother Wind, Brother Fire, Sister Water,  and Sister Mother Earth “who sustains and governs us, and produces varied fruits with colored flowers and herbs.”

In the lecture I listened to it was noted that in this hymn Francis mentions the four classical elements of nature: earth, wind, fire and water.  This could have been his way of claiming that all of Creation sings forth the glory of God.  In all that God has made we can find steps that lead us to Him.

If we could somehow adopt Francis’ view of nature’s trail leading to God it would greatly enhance our spiritual journey.  We might learn to pay more attention to God’s “other book” and be drawn closer to Him.  Adopting Francis’ view would also lead us to appreciate Creation more and instill within us a desire to be better stewards of the Earth.  This twelfth century saint has much to teach those willing to learn.

–Chuck

(The image above was taken a few summers ago on the Appalachian Trail in Shenandoah National Park.)

Being the Fourth of July I suspect that in many churches today and at various Independence Day celebrations the song “God Bless America” has been sung.  This hymn by Irving Berlin is certainly a popular one.  Before its familiar chorus the song says, “Let us all be grateful for a land so fair, as we raise our voices in a solemn prayer.”  Today we should, indeed, be grateful for the beauty of this country.  I have had the privilege of traveling to many foreign nations but I have seen none that excel this one for its natural beauty.  When God created the land we call America He truly did bless it.

The hymn “God Bless America” is considered a patriotic anthem but it might just as well be an environmental one.  Here we sing “From the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans, white with foam, God bless America, my home sweet home.”  In this “solemn prayer” we seek God’s blessings for that which He has made—the mountains, the prairies, the oceans.

I suppose it is fine to continue to ask God’s blessings on His Creation but just as much Creation needs our blessing.  It needs our care.  Many of the mountains in this country have been ravaged.  Our prairies have vastly shrunk due to urban development.  The oceans surrounding our country were terribly polluted even before the BP oil spill.  God blessed this “land that I love.”  We seem to have cursed it.

The way that we have treated our land makes me wonder if we even have the right to sing “God Bless America.”  How can we ask God to bless this land when we have misused it in so many ways?  I have written before that one of my fundamental beliefs is that with blessing comes responsibility.  How many of us have truly been responsible as stewards of God’s good earth?  Of America, “my home, sweet home”?

We seem to have forgotten—or never understood—that God blessed this land with natural resources not just so that we could prosper, but so that we might see and know Him in that which He has made.  My prayer today is that God will bless America with a love for its land and for its Creator.  Both deserve a greater love than we have given thus far.

–Chuck

(I took the image above of Lower Yellowstone Falls in Yellowstone National Park was taken a few years ago in early July.)

“The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it…”  Psalm 24:1

I’ve been singing hymns all my life; I love them!  Not surprisingly, some of my favorite hymns speak of God’s role as Creator.  Some of these include “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,”  “Morning Has Broken,” “How Great Thou Art,” “For the Beauty of the Earth,” and “Fairest Lord Jesus.”  This morning the chancel choir sang another one of my favorites, “This Is My Father’s World.”

Here are the first two verses of this beautiful hymn written by Maltbie Babcock: “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, I rest me in the thought of rocks and trees of skies and seas; His hands the wonders wrought.   This is my Father’s world, the birds their carols raise, the morning light, the lily white, declare their Maker’s praise.  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.”

I love the message of this hymn.  Like the Psalmist the hymnist reminds us that the earth is the Lords.  We’re also reminded that all of Creation joins together in offering God praise.  Furthermore, we are reminded that God does, indeed, speak to us in the world that He has made.

Being Father’s Day I can’t help but wonder how honored God the Father must feel today when it comes to the way we have cared for His Creation.  As a child I was taught to respect the things that belonged to my Dad.   I understood that these things were his, not mine.  I also knew that if I used something that belonged to my father that I had better take very good care of it. 

If we know to respect our earthly father’s belongings you would think that we would also know to respect our heavenly Father’s belongings.  One way we can honor and show respect for God on Father’s Day, and the rest of the year, is by taking good care of that which belongs to Him—the earth.

–Chuck

(The image above was taken at Monument Valley.)

P.S. Rob Sheppard has a new blog that can be found at www.natureandphotography.com.  Make sure to check it out!

“Every good action and every perfect gift is from God.”  James 1:17

To celebrate my birthday last month Bonita and I went to see a local production of Godspell. Godspell is a musical based on the Gospel of Matthew.  I have loved this musical since it first came out in the 70s. There is a lot of good music in Godspell but there’s one song in it that I’ve been thinking about quite a bit the past few days. It’s called “All Good Gifts.” Here’s the first verse and chorus:

All good gifts around us
Are sent from Heaven above
Then thank the Lord, thank the Lord for all his love…

The reason I’ve been thinking of this song is that I have been blown away by the awe-inspiring beauty I’ve seen in southern California this week. Rob has shown me some incredible places! We’ve visited the Pacific coast, the San Gabriel Mountains, and the Mojave Desert. It’s all so beautiful! It is also all a wonderful gift bestowed upon us by our heavenly Father.

The appropriate response to a gift received is a word of gratitude. If someone gives us a nice gift we say “thank you.”  That being the case, considering the fact that all of Creation is a gift from God, shouldn’t we be saying “thank you” a whole lot more often?  “Thank the Lord, thank the Lord, for all His love…”

–Chuck

(The image above was taken earlier this week on the Pacific Coast.  The bottom image was taken last night at Kelso Dunes in Mojave National Preserve.)

Last night I had the chance to write a blurb for a new book on Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill.  Shaker Village is a wonderful historical treasure located near Lexington, Kentucky.  It is dedicated to preserving the memory and work of the Shakers.  The Shakers were a very interesting religious group.  They are remembered for their architecture, craftsmanship, the practice of celibacy, and their hymns.  Perhaps their most famous hymn is “’Tis a Gift to Be Simple.” 

Just today I came across a Shaker hymn I had not seen before.  It is called “Returning Spring.”  Here are a few of its verses:

The voice of the returning spring

Bids nature wake and rise,

And put her best new garments on,

For she has fresh supplies.

How wondrous are the ways of God!

How bountiful His hand!

We see his love in ev’ry tree,

And broadcast o’er the land.

Then why should we, whose lines have fallen

In such a pleasant place,

Be backward in the praise of Him,

Or e’er fall short of grace.

We ought to leap, and shout, and sing,

Till all the mountains round,

Reverberate the joyful news,

To earth’s remotest bound.

I find this hymn most inspirational.  Here we are reminded that God’s love can be found in every tree and throughout His Creation.  We also find a challenge to sing God’s praises for the bounty He has bestowed on us in nature.  Something tells me that if we really paid attention to the glory of spring that we, too, would “leap, and shout, and sing.”  Look around.  Can you find anything worth singing about?  I bet you can and hope you will!

–Chuck

(These images were taken at Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill.)

“Open my eyes that I may see, glimpses of truth Thou hast for me.” –Clara H. Scott

This weekend I had a chance to do a couple of programs at the 20^th annual Wilderness Wildlife Week in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.  Thursday night Ken Jenkins and I did a program called “The Spiritual Side of Nature.”  The presentation was well-attended and warmly received.

During Ken’s portion of the program he used an interesting analogy to describe certain people.  He noted how those who sleepwalk move about while asleep but do not really see what’s going on around them. Ken then indicated that many people move about day to day but remain blind to the wonders of God’s Creation all around them.  Such people are guilty of a different kind of sleepwalking.

I have known Ken eighteen years and can honestly say that I do not know anyone who is more “awake” when it comes to seeing and experiencing God in Creation.  Although his photography business is based in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, Ken has a ministry that takes him all across the country.  In his programs he shows wildlife and landscape images he has taken and draws incredible spiritual truths from them.

Knowing that not all of you will be able to hear Ken speak I want to commend to you his recent publication Nature is the Art of God: A Journey Into the Beauty and Wonder of Creation.  It is one of the most beautiful photographic devotional essays I’ve ever seen.  You can order copies from Ken’s website: www.kenjenkins.com.

Listening to Ken’s presentation Thursday night, and then looking at his new book, has made me want to do a better job of seeing God in Creation.  I think I do a decent job of seeing the obvious but know that there are folks like Ken who see so much more.  How can I improve my vision?  I suspect I should begin by asking God to “open my eyes” so that I might see more and then, with His help, try to discipline myself to slow down and really pay attention.  I plan to do this because I really do not want to be guilty of being a “sleepwalker.”  How about you?

–Chuck

(The image above was taken at Morton Overlook a number of years ago in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.)

For many people Christmas is now history, but in reality it has just begun.  In the liturgical calendar Christmas is actually a twelve day celebration that begins on Christmas Day.  This idea is reflected in the popular song “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”  There is, however, far more going on in this song than many people suspect.  For many years it has been used as a teaching device for Christians. 

Throughout the song various gifts are mentioned, most of these gifts coming from nature.  The “true love” who offers them is God.  The very first gift mentioned, “a partridge in a pear tree,” represents Jesus himself.  He is presented as a mother partridge that feigns injury to decoy predators from her helpless nestlings.  The “two turtle doves” represent the Old and New Testaments, which together bear witness to God’s revelation of Himself throughout history.  The “three French hens” are symbolic of the three theological virtues: faith, hope and love.  The “four calling birds” represent the four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

You can easily learn of the other meanings by doing a Google search; the point I want to make here is that for those who are steeped in the Scriptures and theology one can find many images in nature that will help them stay focused on God.  I realize that for some this might seem strange and far-fetched.  It is, however, a practice that we find consistently used in the Bible.  Nahum, for example, looked at the clouds as the dust of God’s feet (Nahum 1:3), while Jesus pointed to the birds of the air and the flowers in the fields as reminders of God’s providence and care (Matthew 6:25-34).

In my blogs I often point out how God’s Creation has a way of pointing us to the Creator.  The likelihood of this happening can be enhanced as we pay more attention to how Scripture itself connects God and nature.  That is one reason I find the version of the Bible put out by HarperOne called The Green Bible so helpful.  It places in green type the various allusions to nature in the Scriptures.  If you want to experience more of God in His book of nature it will pay you to spend more time in His other book, the Bible.

–Chuck

(Since I’ve never photographed a partridge in a pear tree, I share with you today a ruffed grouse sitting in snow.)

It’s Christmas Eve!  Tonight we celebrate the birth of our Savior, Christ the Lord.  This is truly a special time.  Late this evening folks will meet at the church I serve for a candlelight Christmas Eve service.  We will gather in a beautiful, warm and safe sanctuary to remember the events of the first Christmas but the fact that we will be in a “beautiful, warm and safe sanctuary” will stand in quite a contrast to what Mary and Joseph experienced long ago.  I doubt if the place where Jesus was born was any of these things.

The stable in Bethlehem may have been little more than a small cave.  There would likely have been more animals (domestic and wild) present for Jesus’ birth than persons.  The one who created the world would take his first breath surrounded by all that he made—the animals, the hay, the stars above.   Trees would have made possible the manger he was placed in and it would have been nature, too, that provided the material for his “swaddling clothes.”  Mary and Joseph were not the only ones to welcome the world’s Savoir, Creation embraced him as well.  That would be only fitting for as the apostle Paul later wrote, “all things were created by him and for him.”   (Colossians 1:16)

As humans, we are included in Paul’s “all things.”  We, too, were created by Christ and for Christ.  His coming into the world opened a way by which we might enter into a personal relationship with the Maker of heaven and earth.  It is for this very reason we celebrate Christmas.  This night truly is different; it is a “holy night.”

I’d like to close this Christmas blog with the words of Christina Rossetti’s carol, In the Bleak Mid-Winter:  “What can I give Him, poor as I am?  If I were a shepherd I would bring a lamb; if I were a wise man I would do my part; yet what can I give Him; give my heart.”

Merry Christmas!

–Chuck

(I used the image above on this year’s Christmas card.  It was taken at Breaks Interstate Park, about 35 miles from my home.)