Meeting God in Creation

by Alexei Laushkin

When you start to really listen to the testimonies of Christians on how they came to know the Lord you hear a surprising number that start with God’s creation. Even some of our best regarded American evangelicals have similar stories. Here’s the testimony of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) as recorded in The Works of President Edwards:

I walked abroad alone, in a solitary place in my father’s pasture, for contemplation. And as I was walking there, and looking up on the sky and clouds, there came into my mind so sweet a sense of the glorious majesty and grace of God, that I know not how to express. I seemed  to see them both in a sweet conjunction; majesty and meekness joined together… After this my sense of divine things gradually increased, and became more and more lively, and had more of that inward sweetness. The appearance of every thing was altered; there seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast, or appearance of divine glory in almost every thing. God’s excellency, his wisdom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in every thing; in the sun, moon, and the  stars; in the clouds, and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, trees; in the water, and all nature.

When I talk to friends and family members it’s this sort of experience of God, in His creation, that really captures something of the heart. Before the head is warmed to the truth of Christianity, the heart has to be open to the experience of something else. Those experiences often happen in God’s creation, which should tell us something of how God values what He made. After all it’s His world and one day heaven will come down to earth again and as is said in the book of Revelations, God will once again make his dwelling place here.

World without end. Amen, Amen.