God’s Refreshing Revelation

This weekend I made it a deliberate point to get Jude and myself outside (Stacy Leigh was sick so she didn’t join us much). I wanted to do this because interaction with God’s Creation inevitably results in refreshment for God’s image-bearing creatures. Unfortunately for seminarians, the outdoors are often merely a portal we pass through between home and school and work, and for Jude, I had begun to realize that the outdoors were becoming the place you go through to get to the playground with its Crayola-colored plastic equipment and its mind-deadening swings. Certainly the playground offers lots of fun and some good physical challenges along with obstacles that stimulate problem-solving skills, but there is little wonder and awe in a man-made playground.

So, instead Jude and I headed out to the huge front lawn of the apartment complex. We ran and fell belly-first onto the thick grass. We picked up some of the fallen leaves and acorns to examine them up close, and we played with sticks that had fallen from trees so old they may have observed George Rogers Clark as he founded the city of Louisville. We breathed in the fresh air and felt the genuine refreshment of mind, body, and soul that little else can give.

I received this inspiration from Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods. I must admit that I’ve only read half of it. It was one of those many books I have unwisely begun just weeks before a new semester, which must then be shelved until “someday.” Louv believes that “just as children need good nutrition and adequate sleep” they also need contact with nature, and he cites enough sources to back it up (3). Children today suffer from what he terms nature-deficit disorder (He doesn’t mean this as a diagnostic label but merely as a convenient term for identifying and discussing the problem). Recent studies even suggest that a number of modern childhood problems including ADHD, anxiety, and autism can be remedied by contact with the outdoors.

Louv does not write from a biblical worldview, but a lot of his book makes perfect sense only within a biblical worldview. He writes that our inability to fully explain nature “provokes humility” (8), and he quotes one student who says, “I really believe that there is something about nature—that when you are in it, it makes you realize that there are far larger things at work than yourself” (50). The humility-provoking nature of God’s Creation only makes perfect sense when we understand that God has revealed a portion of himself in nature.

If “the heavens declare the glory of God,” why shouldn’t we be humbled at the sight of them (Psa 19:1)? God’s “invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature” have been clearly revealed “in the things that have been made” (Rom 1:20). 

No sober-minded Christian would isolate him or herself from God’s special revelation—the Bible—because the Bible is life-giving. It revives the soul, makes wise the simple, rejoices the heart, and enlightens the eyes (Psa 19:7-8), and if God’s special revelation possesses such power, does it not also logically follow that his general revelation of himself through Creation would possess similar—though lesser—power? I think Paul would answer a strong affirmative. Notice what he says to the Gentiles at Lystra: “[God] did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness” (Acts 14:17). Isn’t it strange that Paul would point out that God’s revelation of himself in Creation is for the purpose of satisfying the hearts of pagan Gentiles? What is happening through Creation is more than God’s merciful satisfaction of the Lystrans’ stomachs. He is in fact giving them gladness.

Now more than ever, we must learn this truth. Our Western way of life differs from almost the entirety of human history and the majority of the world even today. Agriculture has been misplaced from its central position in our society by industry and technology. Where agriculture is primary, contact with the outdoors is taken for granted. Only we in the West can adequately shelter ourselves—deprive ourselves—from genuine, awe-inspiring contact with Creation, and when we do so we deprive ourselves from a means of blessing. We cut ourselves off from God’s self-revelation in Creation, and we rob ourselves of the rest, refreshment, and gladness that God has designed this world to give to his image-bearing creatures. 

We believe in the Incarnation rather than docetism, and yet we try to live a docetic existence rather than enjoying our relationship to Creation, an essential piece to true humanity. Instead, we must practice what we sing: We must in awesome wonder consider all the works God’s hand has made. We must see the stars and hear the mighty thunder and observe God’s power throughout the universe displayed. We must wander through the woods and forest glade to hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees. We must look down from the lofty mountain grandeur and hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze, and in this setting we must allow our soul to sing out: “My Savior God, to Thee, How great Thou art! How great Thou art!”