Learning the Language of Creation

Seeing the Invisible through the Visible

Photo by PRASHANT KUMAR on Unsplash

Over the years it’s not been all that uncommon for me to hear it said, “I don’t really go to church, my church is in nature” or some variation. At an earlier time I might have gently pushed back, but now my response to that inclination is “You’re not that far off! Yes! Of course you are engaging with God when you’re engaging with creation!”

And if that person gave me some more time, I’d quote Paul in Romans 1.20, “Ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.”

“Ever since the creation of the world”…our planet is currently estimated by scientists to be 4.5 billion years old (give or take). Homo sapiens, that is anatomically modern humans like us, are thought to have been around for at least a couple hundred thousand years.

For 4.5 billion years and long before there were any humans to appreciate it, “God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.”

Far longer than there has been human cognition to recognize it, God has been being revealed through creation. It is as if that for literally billions of years, revelation of the “divine nature and eternal power” has been pouring out and gushing over through creation, like water cascading over Niagara or Iguazu Falls. Paul tells us that creation makes visible things that are invisible.

And then, just two thousand years ago on a 4.5 billion year timeline, that same God incarnated in a human, a man, Jesus of Nazareth, and with him visibly came the fullest revelation of the invisible God. “If you’ve seen me you’ve seen my Father.” (Jn 14.9)

Jesus was the clearest revelation of the Creator of the Universe. (Col 1.15-20) Since he made creation and is revealed through creation, it’s no surprise that time and time again Jesus uses illustrations from nature to unpack deeper truths and realities.¹

AND YET…just because Jesus came doesn’t mean that creation stopped revealing God. After Jesus, creation continues to visibly reveal certain things about God that are invisible, just like it always has. Creation keeps speaking of God even if the clearest revelation came in our Lord Jesus Christ.

God wants to be known and reveals God’s self in a myriad ways, Jesus and Scripture being two of the main, and also creation.

The Irish theologian and philosopher of the 9th century, John Scotus Eriugena, said,

“Christ wears ‘two shoes’ in the world: Scripture and nature. Both are necessary to understand the Lord, and at no stage can creation be seen as a separation of things from God.”

St. Augustine of the 4th century said,

“Some people, in order to discover God, read books. But there is a great book: the very appearance of created things. Look above you! Look below you! Note it. Read it. God, whom you want to discover, never wrote that book with ink. Instead He set before your eyes the things that He had made. Can you ask for a louder voice than that? Why, heaven and earth shout to you: ‘God made me!’”

God has two books. St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century said,

“Sacred writings are bound in two volumes—that of creation and that of Holy Scripture.”

In my youth, I was a nature boy. In my mid-20s God lit my heart to confront the brokenness’ of the world in her inner-cities, and my attention to creation waned without ever being entirely lost. Over our years at Corhaven, of course what we did with the land there was a real expression of the Christian discipleship of creation care, but for me (not for Tara mind you) that was more of a theological act than a spiritual act. Tara comes to this instinctually.

In the past couple of years, however, I feel as if God has given me the grace to begin to SEE creation, almost as if for the first time. And it is a sight to behold, in no small part because I’m learning to see God through what God has made, “God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.”

There’s a language to learn here.

Our friend Jerome Daley puts it well, “It’s about learning God’s language that is uniquely spoken through creation. We might call it ‘creation-ese.’” (Jerome writes about this in his post, “Immersion”, building on decades on many trails and written after he spent a few days at Corhaven, and it is highly recommended.)

At this point I feel a bit like Belden Lane in his book The Great Conversation: Nature and the Care of the Soul:

“[I am intrigued] by what the shamans and mystics call ‘the secret language of nature.’ I’ve no illusion of being either a shaman or a mystic, but I’ve longed all my life to be able to listen to wild things speak…

“…something happens when I’m alone on a wilderness trail. Language falls away, and I lose control. Hearing the voices of birds, insects, and trees, I’m like a child missing out on what’s being said—surrounded by whispering adults, spelling out words they don’t want me to understand. I’m set on the edge, bewildered.”

I want to continue to learn to see, and to continue to learn to listen and understand. And thankfully we have many teachers.

Job 12.7 “But ask the beasts, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; 8 or speak to the earth, and it will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. 9 Who among all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this? 10 In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all humankind.”

1. See Chapter 15, ‘The Gaze of Jesus’ in Elizabeth A. Johnson’s Come, Have Breakfast: Meditations on God and Earth.