Seeing Creation

Let me begin by wishing you a very merry and blessed Christmas.  I hope you are having a wonderful day wherever you happen to be reading this.  Last night the church I serve had a late night Christmas Eve Service.  For the message I shared with them I found inspiration in the beautiful Christmas song penned by K. K. Wiseman a few years ago that was recorded by Faith Hill.  It is called A Baby Changes Everything.  Obviously the coming of a baby into any home “changes everything” but never was that so true as the child that Mary brought into the world that first Christmas long ago.

In my Christmas homily I talked about how the baby who was born in Bethlehem long ago went on to change how we look at God, how we look at ourselves and also how we are to look at others.  I very easily could have gone on to talk about how the coming of Jesus also changes the way that we are to look at the earth.  There are a number of different ways this is true.

The first chapter of Genesis makes it clear that the earth is “good.”  After each day of Creation God declared that what He had made was (is) good.  Later the Psalmist would declare that “the earth is the Lord’s.” (24:1)  The fact that God made and owns the earth would indicate that it is quite special.  But realizing that God actually came to earth and for a time made His dwelling here (John 1:14) makes it clear that the earth should also be viewed as holy or sacred.  This planet of our was blessed to be visited by its Maker.  That fact alone sets the earth apart.  We should learn to view this place we live as holy ground and treat it as such.

Jesus would also change the way we look at the earth when he repeatedly used the world of nature as teaching tools for spiritual principles.  The earth, for him, contained a repository of divine lessons.  He told us to pay attention to the birds above us and to the flowers at our feet.  In his parables he often pointed to plants and other natural objects as divine indicators.  The way Jesus looked at the world should change the way we look at it too.  Like him, we are to see the earth as a school of higher learning—much higher learning!

The one born at Bethlehem not only used the natural world as object lessons in his teaching ministry, he also sought the presence of his Father there.  We know that Jesus did attend the synagogues of Palestine and visited the Temple in Jerusalem on a number of occasion but we also learn in the Gospels that it was his custom to find solitude with God on lonely hillsides and in the stillness of garden enclosures.  Later some of Jesus’ followers would come to view the world as evil.  He, however, found it to be a place where God can be found and encountered in a multitude of different ways.  We should look at the earth in the same way.

Today I am very thankful for the many changes the baby born in Bethlehem has made in my life.  I, and hopefully others too, now see God, myself, others and the earth itself differently because “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

–Chuck

(I took the three pictures used above not far from my home in Henderson, Kentucky.)

“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” John 1:14

Even though I was a history major in college I do not consider myself much of a historian.  Still, I do remember that at the time of Christ many Greeks believed that matter was evil.  Only things related to the spirit were considered good.  This philosophy affected many early Christians.  There was the belief among some early followers that the body and all things material were corrupt.  One can only imagine how those holding such a view looked at the natural world.

Today we can say with confidence that the material world is not evil.  We know from Genesis 1 that the world was created by God and that He declared it “good.”  But even if we didn’t have this passage, the birth of Christ also makes the same positive affirmation.  How so?  Simply by His willingness to take on human flesh in the Incarnation God affirms the goodness of the material world and Creation.

Although you rarely hear people declaring the material world evil these days there are still many who make a clear distinction between things sacred and secular.  After the coming of Christ I am not sure that even this is a valid distinction.  The coming of Jesus as Emmanuel—God with us—reveals the truth that the divine presence permeates all of the world.  As Emmanuel, God remains present in and around us.  This means that if we truly have eyes to see then we will discern His presence in Creation and in those around us.  Jesus himself said “the kingdom of God is in your midst.”  If we look closely we will see it all around us.

While I was in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a couple of weeks ago I had a chance to spend some time at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.  In additions to her delightful paintings, the museum displays a number of sayings from the famous artist.  O’Keeffe once said, “seeing takes time.”  When it comes to seeing the divine in this present world it does, in fact, take time.  But if we will be persistent in our looking and open to God’s wonderful surprises, we will discover that the God who made Himself known through the Child born in Bethlehem is still very much in our midst.

–Chuck

(I took the two pictures above on my recent trip to New Mexico.)