This is the first balmy evening of summer. The air is warm and heavy, occasionally stirred by a delicious, soundless breeze.
We all used bug spray tonight; its tangy smell permeated our Bible Study as we sat in our circle on the patio.
I drove home to the tune of a rippling piano and a joyous voice. Whenever the voice went quiet I heard silvery cricket song coming from every direction. Technically I was driving, but actually I was running on the air, running on the music...and I saw blurs of firefly lights across the darkness, like tiny shooting stars.
Well, hello Summer. Nice to have you back.
We were studying Psalm 65 tonight, which I've read before. But I've never seen it as an individual Psalm, if you know what I mean. I'm familiar with the Psalms' terminology, and its refrains and themes. But before tonight if you asked me what Psalm 65 was about, I wouldn't have had the foggiest idea.
Psalm 65 is a sweet psalm of praise, one that is mostly about extolling God's abundant favor to men. The first four verses establish that He is the God who hears us when we pray; that He is both willing and able to answer us. We spent a good deal of time talking over these first verses, but I'm not going to attempt to retell all our discussion.
No, what struck me tonight was in verses 8-13. It's a poetic, glowing description of the world He has made and orders by His hand:
"...You make the dawn and the sunset shout for joy.
You visit the earth and cause it to overflow; You greatly enrich it; the stream of God is full of water; You prepare their grain, for thus You provide the earth.
You water its furrows abundantly, You settle its ridges, You soften it with showers, You bless its growth.
You have crowned the year with Your bounty, and Your paths drip with fatness,
The pastures of the wilderness drip, and the hills gird themselves with rejoicing,
The meadows are clothed with flocks, and the valleys are covered with grain; They shout for joy, yes, they sing."
One of the personal ways my Father speaks to my heart is through His Creation. Yet I was aware of a strange disconnect between myself and the friends around me. I said nothing because their discussion was beautiful and useful; it was focused on God and His deeds, and why He Himself is far better to seek than the mere blessings from His hands.
I couldn't believe I'd never paid attention to those poetic verses before. I could see each as a vibrant picture in my mind. Just picturing the rain-washed fields, the golden waves of grain before the wind, the miracle of tiny green shoots pushing through the loose, rich soil--I could feel my heart swelling with admiration, and brimming over in delight.
Oh, it is a metaphor for God's spiritual blessings, no doubt. But...God makes things grow, and that provides the food for our table. It's more than a metaphor, it is part of our everyday life!
I wanted to speak up, but what could I say? Go off into a poetic rhapsody of my own about the marvel and mystery of nature? That would hardly be helpful. It might sound unhinged, or worse, that I was too preoccupied with nature to give God glory. I just wanted to give God glory by showing them a new perspective on how He provides for us in His earth!
I started wondering why we are so disenchanted with this sort of imagery. Why is it so very easy to dwell on the metaphor, or rather, one-half of the metaphor? Surely something is lost when we can only dwell on one side of a metaphor.
The original audience would have been delighted at this imagery. Grain meant life and food, and hope for next year. They were tied to the land, they worked the land. How do we experience food? Well, we go to the store. Maybe we are delighted by the piles of produce in their crates. We see bread and cheese and milk and eggs sealed in plastic or styrofoam. And we see these in displays of plastic and glass, in an indoor, air-conditioned, man-built building. Ah...now it begins to make sense.
We experience the delight of hot water from our taps and shower heads. We experience the delightful plunge of cold water in man-made swimming holes of tile and concrete, filled with clean (or at least clear) water.
We buy our clothes already made; flocks and shearing, spinning and weaving mean nothing to us. When we experience the outdoors, it is the brief walk between our air-conditioned building, over concrete and asphalt to our air-conditioned cars. Then we weave through traffic and dust on more asphalt roads past our decaying buildings and gaudy shops until we get to our own box. Then we go inside and stare at our glowing screens.
We are cut off from the earth, from nature. Of course I'm glad to have the comforts, sanitation, and mass production that people have worked to build...but all the same, it comes at a cost. We may not think it in so many words, but we sort of take for granted that "the world," is only what we experience. The creature comforts, the man-made pleasures. Nature itself becomes only a jarring note in the familiar melody.
Ugh, it's too hot, it's too sticky, it's too *dirty!* It's too cold, it's too wet, it's too windy, it's too bright, it's too dark. It's too dangerous, it's too uncomfortable, it's too fill-in-the-blank. Sound familiar?
The loss is great when we retreat from God's nature. We lose touch with our bodies. Our sense of adventure languishes within us; suppressed, but never gone. In our increasingly digital age, we are losing interest in real skills, real tangible things that we can touch, taste, and smell, not just see and hear.
What's perhaps even worse is that we lose our hunger for beauty. Nothing we humans invent can come close to a breathtaking sunset. Let me tell you something: God is beautiful, and He only creates beautiful things. God's creation is not primarily functional, it is primarily beautiful! It's dangerous, to be sure; but so is God until you get to know Him.
As odd as it may sound--put down the phone for a bit. Go walk in nature. Breathe in the smell of the trees, the grass. Listen to the creek and the songbirds. Watch the clouds for a while and just think. Close your eyes and quiet your heart. Notice the beauty around you and let yourself be delighted by it. It will be good for your soul, I promise. Talk to God and ask Him to meet with you, to speak to your soul as you walk. Who knows? He loves to answer, and He wants to hear. Anything could happen.
I don't know exactly what my mission in life is, but I do know that wherever I go, part of it will always be re-enchanting people to the beauty and wonders all around us.
~Cadenza
