Glory

If creation is responsive to God, if it praises him, then it bears witness to some crucial realities. Creation, in fact, bears witness to at least four realities - That God is glorious, that God wants to nurture what he has made, that human beings carry a penalty for walking away from God and his plan for them, and that we live in a precarious universe. These might seem like contradictions, but they're not.

Let's start with God's glory. Ever wonder why so many people on the weekends leave the cities to find somewhere in unspoiled nature that they can call home for a few hours? What are they looking for? When we view it with eyes that see beyond the routine, creation speaks enormous volumes about the complexity, greatness, and wondrous power of the Creator. That's why, standing in front of an unexpected waterfall or coming upon a deer in the woods, we get the urge to worship. Nature constantly points us beyond itself to the One who made it, saying, "See! See the One who's responsible for all of this."

People who escape to the great outdoors may not tell you that they're doing it to find God. But that is who they find.

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.

Fitting with the Order of Creation

If creation is orderly, then the last part of the Book of Job in the Bible starts to make sense. Job's life is in chaos. Everything he has ever loved is gone, his health is gone, and his "friends" have come to tell him that all the nasty stuff is happening because Job has offended God, which is not the case.

Then in chapter 38-41, God responds to all this chaotic stuff. Here are some snippets:

"Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much. Do you know how its dimensions were determined and who did the surveying? What supports its foundations, and who laid its cornerstone as the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?" (Job 38:4-6)

"Are you the one who makes the hawk soar and spread its wings to the south? Is it at your command that the eagle rises to the heights to make its nest? It lives on the cliffs, making its home on a distant, rocky crag. From there it hunts its prey, keeping watch with piercing eyes." (Job 39:26-29)

God is detailing from the creation the way in which all he has made is ordered at his command so that it is and does exactly what he wants. His purpose is obvious: The God who, by wisdom, formed an ordered world has also ordered human experience. No matter how chaotic life might appear, true wisdom understands that God is in full control. J.A. Loader wrote: "The existence of the world means, not chaos, but order. And if humans wish to exist in this order, they should integrate into the creational order. This is what wisdom is all about." (J.A. Loader, "Image and Order: Old Testament Perspectives on the Ecological Crisis." In Are We Killing God's Earth? ed. W.S. Vorster. Pretoria: University of South Africa, 1987. p.22.)