Nature's Song

One thing that I really enjoy about having a smart phone is that I can listen to podcasts while I walk or drive. Timothy Keller of Redeemer Church in New York City has his sermons available in podcasts through Gospel in Life. I find him thoughtful, intelligent and relevant. Being up in the beauty of Napa reminded me of one of his sermons that I had recently listened to about Genesis 1-3, titled The Song of Creation.

I jotted down some of it verbatim as well as summarizing some of it here for you.

"You hear the music of the waterfall... Why is it so moving? Nature is singing the praises of its Maker and it is calling you in. "

Simone Weil wrote, 'The love we feel for the splendor of the heavens, the plains, the sea and the mountains, for the silence of nature which is born in us in its thousands of tiny sounds... this love for which every human being has an inkling is incomplete and painful.  It calls us in but we can't get in.'

C.S. Lewis writes, 'We do not just want to see beauty when we look at nature, we want something else which we can hardly put into words, we want to be united with the beauty we see, we want to pass into it, we want to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it... At present we feel like we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door, we discern the freshness and beauty of the morning, but they don't make us fresh and beautiful. We cannot mingle with the splendors we see, we feel cut off from something.'

Simone Weil continues, 'There's a beauty in nature, a spirituality, we are drawn to it. It is music praising its Creator, its glorifying its Creator and it is singing to you about its Creator, it's inviting you into the circle, and yet, we can't go... Nature is a choir. It sings to us. It is singing, "Our Maker loves us, our Maker says we are good!"'

Tim Keeler says, "Why is the beauty in nature painful? Because we can't sing the same song. Every human being has chosen to be their own master, their own lord.  As a result, we experience two things.

First, when we hear nature calling to us to praise our Maker, we have a little trouble with it, because that's not the way our lives go. Nature is saying, 'Our Maker loves us. Our Maker says we are good.  Our Maker enjoys us and delights in us.'  Deep in your soul, you know you need one thing more than anything else.  You need to know that your Maker looks at you and says you are good.  You are right. I love you. You have no flaws. I see no blemish in you.

You need to know that your Maker sings to you of your beauty.  You need that.  But you know you're not good.  You know you are not right with Him. You know you've rebelled.  That's what Genesis 1-3 tells us. So we can't sing the song. We need it but we know there's a barrier.  So what are we going to do?

Genesis 1 points to it.  Where else in the Bible does it start out with, 'In the beginning"? 1 John 1. It tells us that the Word of God in whom all things were created, Jesus Christ, became flesh.  The Word that made matter became matter. And He came to earth and went to the cross.  And on the cross, you see the exact opposite of what happened in Genesis 1.

He spoke and there was no answer, nothing happened.  'My God, my God,' no answer. He was emptied instead of being filled... He was de-created, de-constructed.  He sought God's presence.  Why? Our Maker had to be unmade so that we could be remade, recreated.

Do you believe that He did this for you? If so, you believe that He did that in your place, you know that God loves you, and that God can actually look at you in Christ and say, 'You are good!'  And you need to hear that so badly that until the Spirit of God brings that word into your heart, your life has a void, an emptiness...  You need to know that because of what Jesus did, the Father can now look at you and say, 'You are good!' Until you really hear that, you can't join in the song.  Nature is talking to every human being about God, we all know it down deep, but it is not just talking to us about God in general.  It is pointing us to sing, and we can't sing until we see that our Maker was unmade so that we could be remade."

So, that was the gist of the podcast. I want to join in the Song.  I hope you do too!

Feast for the Eyes

I love Spring in California.  I know some people don't think we have seasons here, but of course we do and they can be dramatic. A week ago I drove on the I-5 south to Newport Beach.  The drive was pleasant with hills and fields green from the recent rains. On Sunday, I did the drive in reverse as I headed back up north. This time the beauty blew me away. The sky was bright blue, the hills verdant green and the fruit and nut trees were like delicate fluffy white and pink clouds lined up in neat rows for acres and acres, miles and miles of tiny blossom-covered trees.  A week before I had hoped that the trees might be flowering but they were completely bare.  Now, I could hardly believe the abundance of life present in the trees.

I know the East Coast get the changing of the leaves of the trees in the Autumn, and that it is fantastic to see them.  People go there just to have the chance to see their vibrant colors. But the Central Valley in California, which is home to more almond trees than almost anywhere else in the world, along with all of the fruit trees creates a breathtaking tableau of Spring that rivals anything that happens in the fall.

As I drove, I longed to be able to capture their beauty in photos.  But I was driving on my own and it really isn't advisable to take photos while driving and there weren't any good places to pull over near the orchards. I had to just drink it in with my eyes and be thankful that I was witness to such beauty.

It did inspire me to zip up to Napa yesterday to see what was blooming there.  Napa always celebrates mustard in the early spring with a Mustard Festival.  I try to get up there during that time, but often I miss the height of it.  The past few years with the drought, the mustard hasn't been as abundant. Yesterday was a different story.

As I approached Napa, the sides of the roads were green with grass and yellow with mustard. I was encouraged thinking that I was in for a real treat.  And I was. I turned off Highway 29 onto a parallel side road a bit before Yountville. There was yellow mustard covering the ground underneath the dark gnarled grape vines all the way to the hills.  I stopped for a few photos there before winding my way through Yountville.

Just past Yountville, you drive around a curve of a hillside and on the right is a spot that the mustard can be especially abundant. Accordingly, just a little further on the left is a fabulous restaurant named Mustards. Today I hit the jackpot.  I pulled over and joined the line of parked cars along the highway.  People were walking from their cars in a giddy daze, looking around in wonder at the golden fields of vibrant yellow mustard in front of them. They held phones and fancy cameras up as they wandered into the rows of grapevines in the waist high mustard.

I wanted to just meld into the scene, become one with the exceedingly fresh abundant beauty of nature. It almost seemed over the top.  Almost too much. Not to mention the brilliant blue sky with streaks of white clouds and the green hills in the background. It was a perfect 75 degrees with a gentle breeze. I had to simply feast on it with my eyes, feel the sun and breeze on my cheeks, smell the fresh sweet air and rub some mustard blossoms with my fingers. And be grateful.

The last photo in this blog was taken in Israel in March 2011 on the Mount of Beatitudes. We walked down the hillside through shoulder high mustard, reflecting on the notion that this is where Jesus taught his famous Sermon on the Mount. I felt a connection between our land and flowers here and in Galilee.