Surrounded by grace

Signs of the Spirit’s all-surrounding grace, signs of new life and the persistence of life are all around us. I suspect that is why many of us return to worship time and time again, because we are celebrating together the life of God in us and the persistence of God’s love for us, no matter what else is going on in our life.

The more we tune in to the world around us, the more we see the life cycle of life, death, and renewed life. Nature can help us to become aware of the smaller deaths and resurrections/rebirths that are part of our own experience.

I connect with this cycle of life in my gardening, which is one of the ways I find God in nature, and it’s a small way I can contribute to the care of the earth. We are part of nature, and we experience the rhythms we find in the natural world–God’s way of telling us that creation is one.

This idea is not new. Barbara Mahany, in her excellent book titled, “The Book of Nature: the Astonishing Beauty of God’s First Sacred Text,” relates how many people over the centuries have spoken of two sources of divine revelation. As St. Thomas Aquinas put it, “Sacred writings are bound in two volumes–that of creation and that of Holy Scripture.” We can sense the presence of the Creator in creation itself. Creation is holy because the Creator is holy.

“God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31)