In September, I hiked in the James Peak wilderness of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. A goal was to see God through His works of creation and depend on His guidance as I went off the Jim Creek trail. Encouraged to walk toward a sunlight valley, I proceeded to it and through it. Drawn by an elk trail, birds and interesting rocks, I climbed up a mountain ridge leading to Parry Peak mountain on the Continental Divide, Colorado. God blessed me and opened my eyes to new wonders and awe.
More recently I was on a flight that enabled me to see the backside of the area. Parry Peak is left-center in the above photo. Two humps along the ridge I hiked were visible to the left of the peak. Wow! What a Powerful Creator!
Every tree, flower, berry, insect, squirrel, bird, elk, moose and rock that I saw was significant. They helped me to see God and be humble before Him.
Could I make a tree and a bird that match in appearance? Could I cause the bird to seek that spot for protection?
Could I make a bird like the Canada Jay use sticky saliva to glue foods to tree branches so they are available in the season of deep snow cover?
Did I give the moose his height enabling it to walk in wetlands and deep snow? Did I make abundant willows in the mountain valleys to provide moose with 60 pounds of food a day?
Did I see the elements, minerals, and rock form, melt, recombine, fracture and get moved to the spot where I saw them? No one but God was a witness.
“the LORD, your Maker … laid the foundations of the earth” Isaiah 51:13
“You covered it [the earth] with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. At your rebuke they fled; at the sound of your thunder they took to flight. The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them.” Psalm 104:6-8
Was I there at the creation week to conceive the genetics for the grasshopper kind to provide for quick-maturing, lichen-eating progeny, that prefer to live at 13,000 feet?
“Be still, and know that I am God … I will be exalted in the earth!” Psalm 46:10
Is it by my command that the Rocky Mountain Parnisian butterfly persists in the wind on the mountain ridges? Did I require the butterfly to lay its eggs on stone crop plants and cause the caterpillar to hibernate under the snow?
Can I make promises about the certainty of the seasons and make trees pleasant to the sight, like God?
“While the earth remains, seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” Genesis 8:22
“And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight.” Genesis 2:9a.
God used questions about Job’s role in the birthing mountain goats, the freedom of wild donkeys, the strength of horses, and migrating hawks, to humble Job and illustrate God’s divine nature and care (Job 39). The insights deeply struck Job with renewed understanding.
“I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5-6)
God’s questioning to Job is an example of preaching that includes illustrations from His creation. It was effective in causing Job to repent of His pride and freed Him to love God and to be blessed by Him.
The truth of God seen through His word and creation seem like folly when one is caught up in man’s wisdom apart from God. But it is not folly. By God’s grace, preaching the truth saves us from our sins. Let us see God and walk humbly with Him.
“For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.” 1 Corinthians 1:21
Wow! You’ve seen a lot and captured it incredibly well.