THE GREAT OUTDOORS
My preference is to “leave the building” in order to seek God.
To leave the books or TV behind and head out
into the country;
to the woods,
the mountains or
to the beach.
I believe that creation clearly shouts “God is!”
That in the great outdoors many encounters with God are to be establish, many lessons about God can be learnt and many truths about ourselves revealed. For many people, the very thing that makes us feel alive helps us to connect with Him, to see His beauty and learn what He can do; to simply escape outside. For many the very thing that opens our eyes is nature and the world around us…
The Great Outdoors Temple
Isaiah 66.1-2
Thus says the Lord: “Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me and what is the place of my rest? All these things my hand has made and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord. But this is the one to whom I will look he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.
Creation is God’s temple.
The Bible, in Genesis starts by describing the building of this temple. All man-made temples were built to copy the heavens and the earth. See God “Surely, everything that comes from the hand of such a master-artist as God has something in it of himself!
There are inspiring places on this created world which ought to make even an unbeliever believe.
I have read regarding the mountains, ‘He who sees no God here is mad.’
“There are things that God has made which overwhelm with a sense of his omnipotence: how can men see them, and doubt the existence of the Deity?”
Charles Spurgeon
Psalm 19.1-6
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun. It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is deprived of its warmth.
Psalm 104.1-4
Lord my God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendour and majesty. The Lord wraps himself in light as with a garment; he stretches out the heavens like a tent and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters. He makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind. He makes winds his messengers, flames of fire his servants.
What we see in creation is what Yahweh is capable of,
Time outdoors is awe-inspiring: “who are we in comparison?”
It helps us see how much we’re treasured and esteemed and yet sosmall!
A Place of Encounter
The Bible and Church history is full of people for whom the greatoutdoors was the place where they were confronted by God:
Psalm 23 & Matthew 6.25-34
(neither makes sense without us being outdoors!)
The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. . . . . . .
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothes?
Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?
For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. . . . .
Freedom in creation.
No phone reception, no email, you can’t look good, you’re at the mercy of the elements; cutting you free from addictions, from restriction & limitations, from expectations put upon us from others, from society, a society far from God but when we get the time, make the time to lose ourselves and find God in his place of worship, creation then life and its perspective are put into their rightful place!
2 Corinthians 3:17
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
