I have never doubted that the presence of God the Creator is discernible in the world around us. Obvious examples are when a lovely sunset can move me to wonder, or a hazy horizon can evoke the kind of longing that feels like an ache in the heart. When I go for a walk in the country, through a wood, across a field, up a hill, the movement and purpose begin to feel like a pilgrimage, that is, a walk that starts as a keep fit discipline, gives way to a more contemplative mood.
The Bible is full of this stuff. Jesus clearly understood the rhythms of the seasons and harvest, the survival tricks of the birds, and noticed enough of the fauna of Galilee to know how fully clothed flowers have a beauty all their own that leaves royal robes looking second rate - "not even Solomon in all his splendour is arrayed like one of these..." Quite so
Today I went to a favourite place. It's been a long week, full of intense exchanges with various people - a funeral service speaking about my teacher of 50 years ago, and my friend for just about as long; a visitor who stayed with us bringing the riches of conversations about art, theology, dealing with grief and fundamental changes in life, news of people's sudden illness, and yet more news of folk I know contracting Covid. So yes, a favourite walk and a camera would be just fine, thank you.
Jesus wasn't the only one who paid attention to birds and learned wisdom from their ways. Along the path we walk there's a small loch where two swans are expecting cygnets any day soon. We watched them build the nest, and the cob throwing together his watching place, a roughly made raft guarding the only waterway to the nest. There are waterhen, coots, mallard, heron and even the occasional cormorant on vacation. The industry and determination to build, brood and bring their young into life is part of that instinctive drive we call life.
Whatever else we make of the creation stories in Genesis, it's impossible to miss the impetus towards life, fruitfulness and more life. Be fruitful and multiply was said to the first humans, but that urge to produce and reproduce is part of the great symphony of our world, a symphony as yet unfinished, and of a new world every year. There is a profound mystery in the surge of the seed, the protective stubbornness of a brooding swan, the blizzard of blossom petals and later seeds cascading from the trees.
So yes, I look at the world around me and discern the movement of God in the waves across wheat fields still green, and hear the music of the wind through the trees, playing variations on a theme of Creation. And yes I look at a pearl bordered fritillary and simply wonder that it is there at all, and then wonder at this delicate miracle, resting in sunlight to absorb energy before continuing its exhibition of winged ballet.
In preparation for a recently published essay, I did some work on natural theology, the belief that God reveals Godself through the created order, that is, God's fingerprints and footprints can be seen all over the place. Amongst other arguments for a theology of nature and a natural theology is the way the prophets speak of God's actions and purposes revealed in the world around.
When Isaiah wanted to give pictures of hope, and clues to what God was about, he often turned to the natural world for illustrations. Trees in the field clap their hands, mountains are made low and valleys lifted up, the desert blossoms, there are springs erupting in the desert. Sir George Adam Smith wrote one of the great commentaries on Isaiah. Here are his words about what was going on when the psalmists and prophets knew God was moving and new things were afoot.
“When psalmist or prophet calls Israel to lift their eyes to the hills, or behold how the heavens declare the glory of God, or to listen to that unspoken tradition which day passes to day and night to night, of the knowledge of the Creator, it is not proofs to doubting minds which he offers; it is spiritual nourishment to hungry souls. These are not arguments—they are sacraments.”
Those words were new to me. But they describe with passion and precision exactly what can happen when you go for a walk, pay attention to the world around you, imagine the Creator's presence in his own creation - spiritual nourishment for our hungry souls, sacraments by which grace takes us by surprise.
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