“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. 2 Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. 3 There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. 4 Their measuring line 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, 5 which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy. 6 Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.” Psalm 19:1-6 ESV
On Sunday night I was sitting on a blanket on my Crazy Creek chair watching the sunset in Joshua Tree National Park. My wife and I were eating dinner and looking out the horizon as the sun slowly set and the full moon steadily rose. It was truly a sacred moment for me. You could see the alpine glow on the peaks of the distant mountains as the sunlight gradually faded away. If you looked at the sky you would see an amazing pallet of ever changing colors. The upper half of it in clear blue color and the lower half a light violet. My chair was placed in such a way that in front of me was a Joshua Tree, to the right was a hill covered with big smooth round rocks (unique to this national park) and in the middle between them was a huge rising Harvest moon. At that moment I felt so alive and at peace. Here I was in the presence of such beauty of God's creation, savoring each moment with the woman that I love, and feeling a profound sense of my Creator’s presence and His amazing grace. Here and now nothing else mattered to me in the whole world, it was well with my soul.
As I was basking in the glory of my Maker’s creation my heart began welling up with a deep sense of gratitude to God both for the moment and for the fact that the moon, the sky, the mountains, the rocks, the Joshua trees, and the desert were just there. I was blessed and privileged to drink in of their beauty and glory. I thought of how many moments like this have taken place throughout the created world where no one was there to see and enjoy it but God Himself.
While gazing at the splender and beauty of the moment, wonder and gratitude began welling up inside and out of my lips came deep, heartfelt praise. I exulted in the beauty and wonder of God, His workmanship in the created world, and His creating and sustaining grace over the world that He made. It was simply amazing to me that God is God.
At that moment I realized that God had surprised me with the gift of another gift. He gave me anew the gift of amazement at what I see. He gave me the gift of sight that awakened me to the reality that every day, every moment, if I open my eyes and look, that there is always more to see in what I see.
The Psalmist tells us that Creation is telling us stupendous things about God! “The heavens are telling the glory of God and the firmament declares his handiwork" (Verse 1). Creation is a gift from God (and by creation, I mean all that God has made, not just mountains, birds, and trees). It is meant to display and communicate his glory. The voiceless, visual, universally available knowledge is that behind it all is a glorious God as maker of the world. The world is his handiwork, and he is glorious.
I love what Spurgeon says about the revelation of God in nature,
The Great Master Author has sent forth several volumes; among the rest is one called the "Book of Revelation," and another styled the "Volume of Creation." We have been reading the Word-volume and expounding it for years, we are now perusing the Work-volume, and are engrossed in some of its most glowing pages. Our love for the sacred book of letters and words has not diminished but increased our admiration for the hieroglyphics of the flood and field. That man perversely mistakes folly for wisdom who persists in undervaluing one glorious poem by a famous author, in order to show his zeal for a second epic from the same fertile pen. It is the mark of a feeble mind to despise the wonders of nature because we prize the treasures of salvation. He who built the lofty skies is as much our Father as he who hath spoken to us by his own Son, and we should reverently adore HIM who in creation decketh himself with majesty and excellency, even as in revelation HE arrayeth himself in glory and beauty.
Modern fanatics who profess to be so absorbed in heavenly things that they are blind to the most marvelous of Jehovah's handiwork, should go to school, with David as the schoolmaster, and learn to "consider the heavens," and should sit with Job upon the dunghill of their pride, while the Lord rehearses the thundering stanzas of creation's greatness, until they cry with the patriarch, "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee; wherefore, I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes." For our part, we feel that what was worth the Lord's making, richly deserves the attention of the most cultivated and purified intellect; and we think it blasphemy against God himself to speak slightingly of his universe, as if, forsooth, we poor puny mortals were too spiritual to be interested in that matchless architecture which made the morning stars sing together and caused the sons of God to shout for joy.
John Piper, one who has taught me much about reading the Volume of Creation says,
God means for us to be stunned and awed by his work of creation, but not for its own sake. He means for us always to look at his creation and say: If the work of his hands is so full of wisdom and power and grandeur and majesty and beauty, what must this God be like in himself! These are but the backside of his glory seen through a glass darkly. What will it be to see the Creator himself! Not his works! Not even a billion galaxies will satisfy the human soul. God and God alone is the soul's end.
I think I can say that I the experience of delighting in some awesome natural phenomena—the moon rise at Joshua tree, a night sky in the clear pollution free Zion National Park, the astonishing Yosemite Falls, or a sunrise over the hills of San Clemente, where I live-is as Piper says, “the prep-school of our affections, readying them to delight in God.”
Christians ought to have better eyes than people in general for seeing the knowledge that every day and night pours forth. We ought to be the kind of people who walk out of the house in the morning with the same sense of suspense and expectancy.
John Piper mentions often the influence of the late Wheaton College professor Clyde Kilby. He says that Professor Kilby “pled with us to stop seeking mental health in the mirror of self-analysis, but instead to drink in the remedies of God in nature.”
I agree. Oh how nature is God’s great gift to our mental health! The moment on that evening in Joshua Tree I can honestly say that I had virtually no thoughts about myself and my problems because I was drinking in the remedy of God’s presence, His greatness, His glory, His power, His majesty, His beauty, and His peace.
In order to glimpse the glory of God in creation we actually have to engage with creation. It means to intentionally, “BE HERE NOW”. That is in obedience to “Be still and know that I am God.” When I practice “BEING HERE NOW”, I consciously stop, look, and listen to God speaking to me though His Volume of Creation, and quietly become alive to nature, being alive to life, and being alive to Him at that moment. At that moment I experience what is called “Transcendence” where I rise above myself, my life, my problems, my little thoughts, and enter into a world so wonderful, so vast, and so much bigger than little me that God has graced me to be an active part of.
Jonathan Edwards describes one of his experiences communing with God in nature:
As I was walking there, and looking up on the sky and clouds, there came into my mind so sweet a sense of the glorious majesty and grace of God, that I know not how to express.... The appearance of everything was altered; there seemed to be, as it were, a sweet calm cast, or appearance of divine glory, in almost everything. God's excellency, his wisdom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in everything; in the sun, moon and stars; in the cloud, and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, trees; in the water and all nature.
Clyde Kilby recommends that we consider nature simply because it is. That is, simply because God has made it. His plea was that we stop being unamazed by the strange glory of ordinary things.
"I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what Lewis calls their "divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic" existence."
I invite you, with Clyde Kilby and myself, to open your eyes and ears, to BE HERE NOW” and to look and listen to the “heavens declaring the glory of God.
Amazed at God again!
Pastor Bill
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