Creation Enjoyment

One of the things I plan to share in my "Creation" talk this Sunday evening is this... that since we personally know the Author and Artist of creation, and have an idea about some of His purposes and intents, we Christians should enjoy the creation more than anyone. Unfortunately, I find that this is not often the case, that many Christians today are ambivalent at best toward the wonders of creation all around us.

I won't be sharing this Sunday night, but here's something I copied out of The Wilderness World of John Muir when I read it many years ago. It relates a conversation Muir had with a farmer as he headed up into the Sierras on a months-long botanical excursion...

"You look like a strong-minded man," he replied, "and surely you are able to do something better than wander over the country and look at weeds and blossoms. These are hard times, and real work is required of every man that is able. Picking up blossoms doesn't seem to be a man's work at all in any kind of times."

To this I replied, "You are a believer in the Bible, are you not?" "Oh, yes." "Well, you know Solomon was a strong-minded man, and he is generally believed to have been the very wisest man the world ever saw, and yet he considered it worth his while to study plants; not only to go and pick them up as I was doing, but to study them; and you know that we are told that he wrote a book about plants, not only of the great cedars of Lebanon, but of little bits of things growing in the cracks of the walls."

"Therefore, you see that Solomon differed very much more from you than from me in this matter. I'll warrant you he had many a long ramble in the mountains of Judea... And again, do you not remember that Christ told His disciples to 'Consider the lilies how they grow' and compared their beauty with Solomon in all his glory? Now, whose advice am I to take, yours or Christ's? Christ says, 'consider the lilies;' you say, 'Don't consider them. It isn't worthwhile to 'any strong-minded man.'"

I don't completely agree with Muir's exegesis here, but find his position food for thought.