Creation is Preaching

 

Creation is one giant symphony of mutual sympathy ~ John Duns Scotus

 

Creation is continually singing and serenading us, but when do we slow down to pay attention?  Creation is continually ministering to us, but when do we receive the offering openly?  And, before this starts to sound like I am waxing poetically, let’s admit that nature is messy, scary, uncontrollable ~ even as we pave over paradise or see creation only as a backdrop/scenery for our social media post.  Creation, like humans, is a mixture of beauty and brokenness.  To be in relationship with creation is to be connected to our Creator.  Genesis 3 tells us our initial home was in a garden where our ancestors were called/given the job to tend and till, be stewards of the soil as the way to steward their souls.  And because at the heart of any relationship is mutuality and free will, God gives us the power to decide how or if we will connect with creation.  Our ancestors chose to eat the fruit from the very tree God instructed to avoid.  This is less about “original sin” and more about our very human nature.  When left to our own agendas, we often select the option which promises us power, fame, or fortune rather than relationships.  Genesis didn’t have to literally happen to be true, because we keep plucking from the earth to feed our own agendas rather than live in relationship with the goodness of God.  We keep gathering more manna than we need, even though it spoils our very souls not to share with those who have not.  I love how our ancestors in Genesis 3, after they eat the fruit, put on fig leaves, which is like wearing sandpaper!  Ouch!  Yet, this is what we keep doing to ourselves.  We keep clothing ourselves with that which we think will protect or provide, even as it scratches our very souls.  And when God comes strolling in the garden, our ancestors hid. Hid from God, which I still do.  I hide from God through busyness and work and running around.  I am like a squirrel that drank 10 cups of coffee (there is an image for you).  And God asks, not with judgment or wagging an angry finger, but with genuine curiosity, “Where are you?”  Where are you today?  You can answer that literally/physically: where are you?  You can answer emotionally: where are you?  You can respond spiritually: where are you?  Where are you hiding, and where have you put on the metaphorical fig leaf that you think will shelter and shield you from the slings and arrows of this harsh/hard world?  Where are you?  Go outside under the shade of a tree, and ponder where you are…and how God, our Creator, meets you right there in that moment.  Amen.