Welcome to Keep the Ground. Keep the Ground is based on Genesis 2:15 where Adam is instructed to work the ground and keep it. It will look at our responsibilities to the earth and what can be done to preserve it.
This past weekend, I went on a camping trip with a good friend of mine. Waking up early in the morning, I was able to spend time outside, enjoy nature and sit in awe of the splendor and the majesty of the world around us that the Lord spoke into existence. The morning was beautiful, but the weather quickly took a turn for the worst with cold, windy, and rainy conditions arriving just shortly after the sunrise and lasting into the night.
Even though the weather wasn’t ideal, the beauty of creation wasn’t diminished and God’s glory was still on display. For today’s letter, I am going to take a few excerpts from my journal and my reflections on God’s creation.
Today is the first morning on our camping trip and I got to wake up to the sound of the birds in the trees. We are situated between a patch of wildflowers and a river with trees above our head providing shade. I look out across the river and and across the hill and see the vibrant oranges and yellows of the sun just starting to rise. How great is our God. The whole earth sings of his majesty. How worthy to be praised is the one who spoke creation into being.
Even now I see a red bird flying from branch to branch and singing for the Lord delights in music. If the works of the Lord are seen in his creation, then the acts of the evil one must be destruction and silence.
There is something truly remarkable that happens when you are out in nature and you get to experience the goodness of God’s creation. I went on to continue discussing the sounds of the birds singing and how we often don’t even realize what is missing until we are reminded about it.
The same is true with our walk with the Lord. Satan wants to do everything he can to keep us from being focused on the Lord. If he can drown out the sound of the Lord’s calling in our life, we won’t even notice when his voice gets too hard to hear above all of the distractions that we allow into our lives. It is only when we take the time to reset and allow things to be the way that they are supposed to be that we realize that he has been there the whole time calling gently to us and waiting for us to respond to his voice.
While I wouldn’t claim to be a poet, spending time with God in His creation brought the following poem. It is no wonder that David, a man after God’s own heart created so much poetry. There’s just something about writing in this way that helps us better understand the fulness of the goodness of God that we can’t understand when we are just using normal language.
Let us sing to the Lord for he is worthy of praise
The birds of the air have a song they raise
The wind blows sweetly through the trees
In chorus with the bumblebees
O shout to the Lord for he is good
He made the flowers and the trees of wood
Rejoice in the Lord for all your days
For He is worthy of all our praise
Spending time in nature is a wonderful way to get back in relationship with God. No where else is his presence more evident than in His creation. I’ve heard it said before that God gave us two books to learn: the first is the Bible, the ultimate source of truth, and the second book is creation where we can see and study God’s attributes of beauty, design, and the complexity that holds everything together.
Just two days in the wilderness getting closer to God and I am more motivated than before to want to protect the world that He has created, to care for it, and to steward it. Perhaps the biggest change that we need to make regarding people and their destruction of the environment is just to get more people to go outside and be willing to go without their phones even for a few hours just to feel God’s presence.
We live in a world where everything is so fast paced and we just want to go from one thing to another without ever taking a moment to slow down and realize the beauty of what is around us. In nearly everything we are doing as a society, it seems like we are heading faster and faster to a cliff of destruction that we could easily avoid if we were to just slow down, spend time with God, and love others and the environment.
This week, try to take some extra time to be out in nature. Take note of the sounds that you hear, the flowers, the birds, the insects. Think about how God has created each of these for a purpose, and more importantly, He has created you and placed you in this world to love Him and to enjoy His creation.
Thank you for joining Keep the Ground.
May your labor be fruitful, and your land well-kept.
— Christopher
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