TRANQUILITY

On a recent Sunday afternoon, I trod the 127 footsteps from the kitchen door down to the old elm tree by the creek—blissful backyard hideaway!—and sat with my husband like the old married couple we are on the lounge chairs he set side by side in amongst the marshy grasses. Wearied from his heavy workweek, he dozed off in the shade while puffy clouds built up above and around us in a ring circling the rim of the coulee we’re tucked into.

But I couldn’t sleep—the quiet was too noisy, too stimulating for me. Water babbled and bubbled over the beaver dam, birds swooped and sang chirping cheer, butterflies and bugs cavorted in the reeds, and the wind shushed at us through the willows growing thick along the banks. A wee frog sunned himself on a rock, and I thought I smelled a skunk but he left us alone.

And I pondered how sacramental the whole of nature is.

Now, we Evangelicals in the Reformed tradition don’t usually observe “sacrament” in the way some denominations do. That is, we don’t believe certain rites or mysteries effect conversion and regeneration; rather, we see the commemorative or memorial and not salvific value of, say, the ordinances of the Lord’s Supper and baptism. We believe that, upon personal trust in Jesus’ work on the cross, spiritual life springs up through an instantaneous creation by the Holy Spirit within the heart and soul, producing new attitudes and desires because of what God has done for us in Christ, leading to change in habits and actions.

However, the poetic sound of the smells-and-bells definition appeals to my fleshly, artistic nature. So, for the purposes of literary expression alone and speaking completely aside from theology, nature seems to me almost a sacrament: the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.

After all, doesn’t the musical tinkling of water over cobblerock and the cooling kiss of a breeze on a summer’s day signify the Lord’s great love? Doesn’t the sharp pungency of wild mint crushed beneath my heel and the lush greenery raised to life so miraculously from a frozen snowdrift tell of His great mercy? Isn’t the hush and the plushness a reflection of His peace?

Okay, maybe I can’t go so far as to say that nature is sacramental; that’s bending theology too much. But with Isaiah and the Psalmist and Paul I declare:

The whole earth is full of the glory of the Lord and of His steadfast love; how manifold are His works and how majestic is His name! His eternal power and divine nature are clearly evident in His beautiful creation.