Why the Trees Clap their Hands

Creation wasn't just built according to plan. It isn't just orderly. It's alive, and in the midst of its life it speaks to God with words of amazing praise. There is this unbelievable vitality to the world God made, because God is the source of its life. So creation responds to the One who formed it, uttering praise from the earliest dawn to the darkest part of the night, from the sea to the mountains to the forest to the desert.

In the Old Testament book of Isaiah, the prophet speaks of a time when God's people will return to him and be blessed by him, with creation giving praise as it does so:

You will go out in joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
will clap their hands.
Instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree,
and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.
This will be for the LORD's renown,
for an everlasting sign,
which will not be destroyed." (Isaiah 55:12-13)

We might dismiss all this fancy language as the license of a poet, but it has buried within it a vital truth - everything that exists was created to recognize the God who made it. Nothing lives for its own praise. It gives its praise to God. If creation was good, as God declared it to be, it had to praise its Maker. If it denies the Maker and lives for itself, it's not good.

That's why the trees clap their hands.