BEAUTY IN CREATION
Readers of the Psalms are familiar with how the beauty of nature can bring joy to the heart and lead to our praising God. As an example,
Psalm 8 has the lines: “I look up at your heavens, made by your fingers, at the moon and stars you set in place ……sheep and oxen, all these,yes, wild animals too, birds in the air, fish in the sea, traveling the paths of the ocean.”
But are we losing touch with nature in our busy modern technological world? For the most part, we have less and less exposure to the natural beauty that can turn our thoughts to God.
The awesome beauty in nature, such as the stars that fill the heavens, makes us feel small and insignificant. That, at the present time, that is counter-cultural. We are commonly considered the Be-all and End-all.
But neither nature nor natural beauty are God. Some people say that they don’t go to church but instead they find God out in nature. Maybe rather God is finding them — because they are ‘lost’.
Nature is often beautiful, but it can be also be hostile and dangerous, ‘red in tooth and claw’ (Tennyson). Both the beauty and the frightfulness of nature has the potential of leading us to God, either through bringing us intense pleasure — or fear.
