Recently at
AFC we sang what was for me a new song: Creation
sings the Father’s song. Just like the
hymn I’ve chosen to sing at the start of this Sunday’s worship: All creatures of our God and King – it celebrates
‘experiencing’ God in nature.
Tomorrow I’ll be attending a Ministers’ Book Group and we’ll be discussing Places of Enchantment in which the author, like many people, is just so inspired by the beauty and wonder of the natural world that he finds no problem in singing with the psalmist ‘The heavens declare the glory of God’.
And, of course, we have just celebrated Harvest which, I suspect, is one of the most accessible festivals of the church year because for many it resonates with that popular maxim: One is closer to God in a garden than anywhere else on earth. So on Harvest Sunday church and garden combine and this blended spirituality rings true for lots of people.
All well and good – until I sit down yesterday evening and watch a wonderfully filmed and truly beautiful programme about Autumn and I just can’t get one scene out of my mind. It showed the tenacious salmon swimming upstream to spawn – having to jump some two metres up the rapids. There to greet them at this point, as they flung themselves into the air, were half a dozen grizzly bears who caught them in their jaws, instantly crushing them with their teeth. After catching and eating around thirty salmon each these bears retired to the bank for an afternoon snooze!
I love the rolling hills and wooded glade as much as the next person – but I’m increasingly aware of the harshness of nature, ‘red in tooth and claw’ – that the only thing that really matters is ultimately the ‘survival of the fittest’. And I’m left pondering – does ‘Creation sing the Father’s song’? Is God just on the side of the winners? Does God condone aggressive violence in order that one species becomes dominant over another?
Nature, it seems to me, sends out an ambiguous message if aligned too closely with the character of God and I need more than the heavens to see God’s glory.
For me God reveals himself most in the character and teaching of Jesus. I am totally inspired by his stories – about looking out for neighbour, forgiving enemies, offering kindness to the marginalised – and serving others because in doing this we are serving God. I’m totally inspired by the cross when Jesus broke the supremacy of the ideal that only the fittest and most powerful prosper – and instead offered humanity an alternative model of self-sacrificial love - that of giving up your own supremacy for the sake of another.
Tomorrow I’ll be attending a Ministers’ Book Group and we’ll be discussing Places of Enchantment in which the author, like many people, is just so inspired by the beauty and wonder of the natural world that he finds no problem in singing with the psalmist ‘The heavens declare the glory of God’.
And, of course, we have just celebrated Harvest which, I suspect, is one of the most accessible festivals of the church year because for many it resonates with that popular maxim: One is closer to God in a garden than anywhere else on earth. So on Harvest Sunday church and garden combine and this blended spirituality rings true for lots of people.
All well and good – until I sit down yesterday evening and watch a wonderfully filmed and truly beautiful programme about Autumn and I just can’t get one scene out of my mind. It showed the tenacious salmon swimming upstream to spawn – having to jump some two metres up the rapids. There to greet them at this point, as they flung themselves into the air, were half a dozen grizzly bears who caught them in their jaws, instantly crushing them with their teeth. After catching and eating around thirty salmon each these bears retired to the bank for an afternoon snooze!
I love the rolling hills and wooded glade as much as the next person – but I’m increasingly aware of the harshness of nature, ‘red in tooth and claw’ – that the only thing that really matters is ultimately the ‘survival of the fittest’. And I’m left pondering – does ‘Creation sing the Father’s song’? Is God just on the side of the winners? Does God condone aggressive violence in order that one species becomes dominant over another?
Nature, it seems to me, sends out an ambiguous message if aligned too closely with the character of God and I need more than the heavens to see God’s glory.
For me God reveals himself most in the character and teaching of Jesus. I am totally inspired by his stories – about looking out for neighbour, forgiving enemies, offering kindness to the marginalised – and serving others because in doing this we are serving God. I’m totally inspired by the cross when Jesus broke the supremacy of the ideal that only the fittest and most powerful prosper – and instead offered humanity an alternative model of self-sacrificial love - that of giving up your own supremacy for the sake of another.
I think I would have to say that for me faith
finds its brightest star in Jesus Christ – not the night sky.
With best wishes,
With best wishes,
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