“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.” –Psalm 19:1-6 ESV
It’s ridiculous how close you can get to the Lord when you’re surrounded by nothing but His outright creation.
Sure, technically everything is His since He creates the things we use to create other things but when there’s not a single thing around you that was placed there by a human being the feeling you get is surreal.
People have been crying out against America recently. Our consumerism and selfishness and removal from God and his statutes by choice are driving us in the wrong direction, evidently. They say that we’ve abandoned our foundations in scripture. They say we’ve fallen off the wagon spiritually. They say that our political leaders need Jesus if anything good is ever going to come from this country. Personally, I think all three notions are rather flamboyantly ‘off the deep end.’
For millennia, humans have done nothing but push God to the back burner, and sometimes knocked Him completely off the stove. In fact, we even killed Him at one point (albeit He submitted Himself willingly, but we still did the act). So it’s really no surprise to me that the people of America, who are, in fact, simply humans, are not exactly savvy to the idea of a God that even exists, let alone one Who would die for them. I don’t believe Americans are abandoning any kind of commitment they made centuries ago, because the humans we have in America today are not the same humans we had in America in 1776. The humans of America today are a byproduct of a culture that never presented them with the real Jesus in the first place. Their opinions on Christianity and a large part of their dissonance with it stem heavily from a generation before them that misrepresented Jesus within their homes and showed them rather poorly how much He actually does love us. So why are we surprised when they want nothing to do with Him?
As a self-proclaimed outdoorsman, who is fanatically in love with nature and the beauties and magnificence that it holds, I’ve had a few opportunities to inspect my faith within the frame of the outdoors and the raw creation of God at its root (no pun intended lol). In my own life, I’ve noticed something quite profound: when I take time to get away and just explore nature, rest in my hammock and read some scripture, or just plain be in the wild, it’s easier for me to see my connection to God. That might sound kind of new-agey or weird but honestly, I can’t ignore it. When I subtract myself from the hectic equation of the city and get into the woods I feel closer to Jesus.
Don’t get me wrong–my physical place on earth has nothing to do with how close Jesus actually is to me in my life–He’s always right by my side and is never ever going to leave me (Romans 8:31-39). That is certain. But I can’t deny that in the wild I see Him standing next to me much more clearly than I do otherwise. Distractions are removed, stress is alleviated, if only for a moment, and I’m left with a mind that is free to search deeply for His teaching at this period of my life, to learn of Him more and His love for me, too.
As a result, the situation I find myself in begs for me to apply what I’m learning from Him directly. And when I think about Him in the light of nature, I can’t ignore what I see: He is glorious! He is magnificent! He is ridiculously creative! He cares enough about me to give me a beautiful sunset and a stinking awesome cliff to watch it from on the weekend I celebrate my birthday. His love extends much further than anything we could imagine.
So it’s easy to see the logic that people who are criticizing humans in America of leaving God are following. In simpler times, when technology and distractions in infinite forms weren’t screaming for our attention, people felt closer to God. They saw their connection to Him much more clearly than many thousands (millions?) do today. That doesn’t mean that we’re abandoning anything, not even close. People have always and will always deny their Creator until the second He returns and makes them declare Him as Lord. But at the same time we can’t deny that engulfed by His creation, we see His face much more clearly.
“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.” –Psalm 19:1-6 ESV
Ty Hirsch 