Good morning…
We were in a very remote section in the wilderness of Maine, no cell service, no WiFi for a whole week. When we returned again to access the power of the internet, God’s gentle voice was amplified in the first email I received. Enjoy revisiting this quiet wisdom with me now.
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DAILY MEDITATION | JULY 6, 2021 – Nature Points to God’s Love by Henri Nouwen
All nature conceals its great secrets and cannot reveal its hidden wisdom and profound beauty if we do not listen carefully and patiently. John Henry Newman sees nature as a veil through which an invisible world is intimated. He writes:
“The visible world is . . . the veil of the world invisible . . . so that all that exists or happens visibly, conceals and yet suggests, and above all subserves, a system of persons, facts, and events beyond itself.”
How differently we would live if we were constantly aware of this veil and sensed in our whole being how nature is ever ready for us to hear and see the great story of the Creator’s love, to which it points. The plants and animals with whom we live teach us about birth, growth, maturation, and death, about the need for gentle care, and especially about the importance of patience and hope. . . .
It is sad that in our days we are less connected with nature and we no longer allow nature to minister to us. We so easily limit ministry to work for people by people. But we could do an immense service to our world if we would let nature heal, counsel, and teach again. I often wonder if the sheer artificiality and ugliness with which many people are surrounded are not as bad as or worse than their interpersonal problems.
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I take the next step and sense that our wide array of interpersonal problems, the ugly, artificial pain we inflict on each other, grows up from our failure to listen carefully and patiently. How differently we would live if we were constantly aware of the great secrets, the hidden wisdom, and the profound beauty of God’s love for all of us, an organic love teaching us about birth, maturation, and death, about the need for gentle care, and especially about the importance of patience and hope.
Might we allow the complex, visible world of nature to heal, to counsel, and to teach us about our own complex, invisible innermost world? If we listen carefully and patiently, our unique role will be quietly revealed in the great story of our Creator’s love for all.
Don’t you realize that God is the Creator? Don’t you hear the truth? Haven’t you been told this from the beginning? Haven’t you understood this since he laid a firm foundation for the earth?
He sits enthroned high above the circle of the earth; to him the people of earth are like grasshoppers! He stretches out the heavens like a curtain, spreading it open like a tent to live in. He reduces rulers to nothing and makes the elite of the earth as nothing at all. They barely get planted and barely take root in their position of power when the Lord blows on them and they wither away, carried off like straw in the stormy wind.
The Holy One asks: “Can you find anyone or anything to compare to me? Where is the one equal to me?” Lift up your eyes to the sky and see for yourself. Who do you think created the cosmos? He lit every shining star and formed every glowing galaxy, and stationed them all where they belong. He has numbered, counted, and given everyone a name. They shine because of God’s incredible power and awesome might; not one fails to appear!
Why, then…would you ever complain? And my chosen…why would you say, “Yahweh isn’t paying attention to my situation. He has lost all interest in what happens to me.” Don’t you know? Haven’t you been listening? Yahweh is the one and only everlasting God, the Creator of all you can see and imagine!
He never gets weary or worn out. His intelligence is unlimited; he is never puzzled over what to do! He empowers the feeble and infuses the powerless with increasing strength (Isaiah 40:21-29, TPT).
Amid the complexity of our daily lives, may we listen carefully as God empowers us in our feeble state, infusing us with increasing strength as the pure powerlessness we each try to conceal is graciously, gradually, gently revealed and healed by God’s mysterious resurrection power.
…Sue…
