He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. (Hebrews 1:3)

The book of nature continues to be a bestseller because God continues to read from its pages. He begins the day with an opening-line sunrise and concludes with a sunset exclamation point. He makes the “going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy” (Psalm 65:8). God’s story is an ongoing liturgy of nature, and if we listen closely, we can hear His daily homily reminding us that we walk on hallowed ground. Sadly, instead of carefully listening to God sing His creational hymns, we often use our outside voices and drown Him out with our own secular soliloquy. We insert our human voice into God’s screenplay, and the world ends up looking like a badly overdubbed martial arts film.

A good friend of mine drove from Seattle, Washington, to Madras, Oregon in 2017 in order to witness firsthand the total eclipse of the sun. The traffic was terrible because thousands of her closest friends had the same idea. On the last part of her trip, she and her friends arose early in the morning in order to find a good viewing spot, and when they arrived, they stopped for breakfast at a pancake house. She dubbed the restaurant “The Pancake House on the Edge of Totality,” which is a pretty heady title for a breakfast establishment but yet quite appropriate considering its location in relation to the impending event. This rare meteorological phenomenon caught the attention of the world and prompted many sane people to take a break from their humdrum lives to see a rock pass in front of a star. They undertook hours of preparation and travel all to witness darkness in the daytime, a phenomenon that is quite easily replicated by an afternoon nap. I find it absolutely remarkable that this event drew the attention of millions of people from every country throughout the world. It spoke the same language to everyone, no matter his or her culture or ethnicity. It was well attended not because it was a unique physical event but because it offered a front-row seat to a divine spoken-word performance.

Recurrent natural phenomena such as sunrises and sunsets, the seasons, and the tides are designed to synchronize our lives with God’s words. He reminds us to set our spiritual watches by the recurrent pealing of His natural bell. He embedded predictability into nature not to create mindless routine but to bring Him back to mind. One of the consistent themes in the Bible is God’s call to remember, remember, remember. Thankfully, He makes it easy on us by meeting us in the sun and the rain, the morning and the evening, and the fall and the spring. We should be grateful that God continues to schedule meetings with us in His daily planner because we all too often forget to show up. How sad that despite being surrounded by divine discourse, we often don’t hear a word He says.

Photo by Matt Nelson on Unsplash