The Palpable Sense of the Sacred: Part 1

Nature & Holy Scripture

Ever since the creation of the world, God’s eternal power & Divine nature, invisible though they both are, have been understood & seen through the things that He has made. God was & continues to be first known through nature. He is present always & everywhere, without beginning or end. By means of all created things, without exception, the Divine assails us, penetrates us & molds us. “In the beginning when God created the heavens & earth, the earth was a formless void & darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then Gods said ‘let there be light’ & there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from darkness. And God said let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, & let it separate the waters from the waters. So, God made the dome & separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. God call the dome sky. And God said, let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place & let the dry land appear. God called the dry land, earth & the waters that were gathered together, He called seas.” Though God our creator is not the wind nor the water themselves He is embedded in the light, the wind & the water & in all living things. It is the beauty, stirring & rumbling of nature that reveals the trace of the Divine.

History tells us that it was in the 12th century when the ordering of science & the systemization of the natural world seeped into Christian thought, an enlightenment that clarified an earlier ecclesiastical sense that through nature, which was clearly God’s handiwork, humankind might glean the working of the One who had formed the mountains & parted the seas & come to a deeper knowledge therein. Humans then began to embrace the thought that God had infused the natural world with symbols & meaning & if only we read what is in trees, seeds & flowers, & the storms & waters, & the stars & celestial bodies, & the birds, animals & insects, we might more fully comprehend the Creator. As interest in science grew, increasingly the concept that nature itself as a source for Divine revelation also gradually grew as people began to be recognized that they could hear & feel in their hearts the very voice of God through His creation.

The studying of nature is the one sacred text that needs no translation: it is unfurled without words, composed in an alphabet of: seashells & stars, moon beams & fireflies, waves & ripples of water & the transformation of caterpillars into to butterflies. God creates a palpable sense in our heart & soul through the beauty of nature, the wind (His very breathe) & through the unceasing rhythms & currents of the water. The deep inner peace & love of the very heartbeat of God our Creator can be felt & infused into our soul if we only pay attention to what lies around us.

The readers of the sacred text of nature are prophets & poets, Christians, Jews, Buddhists & Muslims & even those who have never even set foot in any house of worship. Our Creator who was & still continues to be, first & always known through nature reveals His Divine presence to all who have eyes to see & to behold, ears to hear & a heart that is open to receive. God’s very heart is etched in all of creation. He is best apprehended through the reading & experiencing of creation (His original text), alongside of the Holy Scripture. Biblical Scholars are quoted as saying that: “Christ moves among us in two shoes, one shoe being that of creation & the other of Holy Scripture” stressing the need to be alert to both & thus to be spiritually fed & infused by both.

~Posted by Rev Kathryn Bindig, MDiv. MS; Pastoral Care Minister with assistance from Rich Muscatello; Director of Business Development & Strategy