God, Nature and Us

The scenery that God has placed around us can serve to help us connect with Him spiritually. From the sky to the dust of the Earth, God touches us with His creative stage setting where we act out our lives. William Shakespeare once said, “And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.”

We are after all created, as God’s Word tells us in Genesis 2:7, “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”  We came out of the same dust that God used to create the scenery around us. Just like the plants in nature, we have a calling to become more as we emerge from the dust.

Anais Nin told us about this tenuous part of our development out of the dust in saying, “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Blossoming for the Lord is our calling, but we can choose otherwise. We can overrule God in all things if we are that foolish, but what sensible person would want to overrule the one who created us, is with us every moment, who knows the number of molecules in our natural body and especially loves every molecule that makes us whole. He loves His created children. And while He’s in our being, He’s managing every particle of mass in the universe!

As children of God, Psalm 103:13-17 informs us in saying: “As a father pities his children, So the Lord pities those who fear Him. For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. For the wind passes over it, and it is gone, And its place remembers it no more. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him, And His righteousness to children’s children…”

We are all connected with all who have gone before us and all who will live after us. While we are in this natural world, we are called to seek the spirits of those who brought us to our place in history and use them as our springboard to leave a better world to those who will follow us.

Psalm 1:3 tells us this about the Godly man: “ He shall be like a tree Planted by the rivers of water, That brings forth its fruit in its season, Whose leaf also shall not wither; And whatever he does shall prosper.”

An old Greek proverb speaks to us about life in saying,” “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”

So, let us get the fertilizer of Christ-Jesus He left us in the Gospels and mix it in the water of our Baptism, and we will be prepared to flourish in our gardens of life. In concert and love with our brothers and sisters in Christ, we can plant our share of trees for the shade of future generations, always remembering those who passed on the shade of our time.