We See Only Ourselves

Scripture References: Psalm 89:1-14; Romans 8:20

In Old Topanga Canyon, Southern California, dissimilar groups manage a peaceful coexistence: pot growers, a nudist colony, a sprout farm, and million dollar homeowners. The common factor is their relationship with nature. When the great fires of 1993 burned towards them, the counter-culture devotees looked to nature for help. “Can you feel the spirits closing in around us?” one whispered. “The harmonic convergence of nature will protect us.”

As an Arctic explorer lay in his sleeping bag, the green eyes of a male wolf glowed in the dark. The wolf repeatedly paced, sat, and stared. The man said that seeing the wolf’s eyes reminded him how humans are necessarily coupled with other beings. N. C. Wyeth, commenting on the natural world, said, “I feel so moved sometimes toward nature that I could almost throw myself down into a ploughed furrow.”

What is this yearning in man, ancient and modern, to return to nature for spiritual values? What is this longing for something in our past that we call nature, that gives us peace and purpose? Is it a beauty that casts a spell and charms like Chinooks in winter? Or do we see in nature a permanence denied us? Or an endless mocking of our aging, wrinkled bodies? Nature has no answer, for it too is fallen, and fallen because of us. And since creation looks to us for its redemption, why would we look to it for peace? How can what depends on us for its renewal be simultaneously the source of our peace?

Courtesy of Speaker’s Sourcebook of New Illustrations by Virgil Hurley © 1995 by Word, Incorporated.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.