by Jared Hardin

September 22, 2023

Sometimes the world puts on a show, and we feel the privilege of having just been there to see it. Tonight, I walked outside to watch our herd of heifers walk down the hillside back toward the barn. I was admiring the sunset and the shades of yellow appearing in the maple trees across the valley. At just that moment a bald eagle flew by, returning to her nest after an evening of fishing. Most summers, she and I compete for largemouth bass in the pond north of where I live. She’s proven to be the superior angler.

We’re just now easing into what I view as the best part of the year. Fall is a time when it’s easy to see God’s hand in creation. He could’ve chosen to have the leaves simply wilt and shrivel into brown nothingness, but instead he chose to give us the beauty of Southern Indiana autumn. That’s grace—undeserved kindness toward us for no other reason than beauty and love and glory.

This isn’t just me trying to be poetic. The Bible speaks clearly of how God displays his beauty in creation. King David wrote in the nineteenth Psalm (19:1-2):

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.

Don’t miss what he’s saying: creation, the skies, and the beauty of nature reveal the glory of God. God’s intrinsic worth and value are broadcast through the sky. The Apostle Paul makes a similar point in Romans 1:20. As part of a broader argument about the fact that sinners are left without any excuse to know there is a God and turn to him, he says, in part:

“God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made…”

What is invisible (God’s power and divine nature) has become visible to us through the natural world. How incredible! In theology, we call this idea general revelation. This doctrine teaches us that the Lord has, in his grace, revealed himself to every single human being through the world he created. If you slow down, look carefully, and reflect in the deepest depths of your soul, an honest person should come to no other conclusion other than that there is a Divine Being and that he is immensely powerful and wise beyond our imagination.

As Christians, however, we believe that this God hasn’t left us to find him in the trees and the wind. We may be able to see his power and glory in the natural world, but the natural world can never tell us what is wrong with our own hearts, and why our hearts ache and long for something more. For this, general revelation is not enough. We need special revelation. We need God himself to speak to us and tell us what is wrong with us, what he has done about it, and where it’s all headed in the end. That special revelation is found in the story of God’s Word.

I’m convinced that some people have abandoned the idea of God in part because they have stopped going outside. Living in a world of pavement, screens, and food that magically shows up wrapped in plastic makes it easy to lose touch with reality. Fight that artificiality. Go find something real, look at God’s creation, and consider your own soul.