"Nature desires for us to discern the great story of God'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. And even more profoundly, the properties of water, oil, bread, and wine all point beyond themselves to the great story of our re-creation. Food and drink, mountains and rivers, oceans and skies – all become transparent when nature discloses itself to those with eyes to see and ears to hear what the Great Spirit of God is saying to us." Henri J Nouwen
One of the greatest spiritual practices we can develop is the simple practice of noticing. As I write this, all around me there is change happening, the leaves are turning, the temperature of the air is cooling, plants are beginning to retreat into the earth, the birds and animals that have been frequenting my garden are coming less frequently, some have stopped all together.
We are in one of those times in the year that it seems everything is changing, a time between times of you like. It’s at times like this, that the creative action of God becomes acutely evident. It’s visible all around us, things change.
But nature doesn’t just give us clues to what God is doing, nature is the language of God… and we are part of that language. Creation isn’t just what God did, creating and re-creating is the nature of God, the inhale and exhale, the beating of the divine heart, the outpouring of God’s love.
In the Genesis story God delights in the process and the outcome of creation. At each step, God looked at it and “saw that it was good”. Of course this means that there was the potential for it not to be. Why would God look if there was no risk, no possibility that things wouldn’t be good?
All around us things are dying back, becoming dormant in order to begin the process of rebirth which will emerge in the spring. Nature doesn’t force this rebirth, it flows with the seasons and trusts that the spring will come, that seeds will germinate, that the insects will be born and the animals will reemerge.
Creation and re-creation never stop, the work of God never stops, stopping only leads to stagnation and death. In this season we learn one big lesson from nature, and that is trust, not in a passive sit back and wait way, but in an active and expectant way.
Whatever you are experiencing right now, be it creation or recreation, new birth or the need for a time of rest to rebuild energy, then that is the work of God, and all God’s work is good!