God has created us to perceive his glory and goodness in the beauty we find all around us.

It’s good for us to learn how to perceive the created world with a sense of wonder, rooted in the way in which the created world carries within its own beauty many signs of the infinite beauty of its Creator.[1]

This morning, I saw ten Canada geese fly overhead, perfectly spaced, flying in formation. How do they know to do that? I looked out my kitchen window at lunchtime and there was a little hummingbird darting from flower to flower—so busy!. I just had to pause for a moment and watch. Scripture teaches us God created geese and hummingbirds to show us his glory and goodness. Poet Thomas Traherne writes:

“You never enjoy the world aright, till you see how a grain of sand exhibits the wisdom and power of God; and prize in everything the service which they do you, by manifesting the Lord’s glory and goodness to your soul.”[2]

God’s goodness and beauty are all around us. God’s character is on display day and night (Ps. 19). But we may not perceive nature’s loveliness as a reflection of God’s glory, actually created by the Lord to reveal his beauty to us. God designed all of creation to elicit a response in us, to bring us a smile of delight, a touch of joy, an internal heartfelt expression of wonder as we watch.

We want to regain the “vision at the heart of creation and the ability to see that vision”[3]—God is revealing his glory and goodness through creation. Our part is to pause and prize his gift.

We can develop the habit of stopping for a few moments throughout our day, to receive one of the millions of ways God displays his beauty, and to receive it, really receive it, as a gift Jesus is giving to us.

[1] Centuries of Meditation 1:27 in Selected Poems and Prose cited in David Duntley Hart, Doors of the Sea, 56.

[2] Traherne, Centuries of Meditation 1:27, in Selected Poems and Prose; cited in Bentley Hart, Doors of the Sea, 56, quoted in Matthew Levering, Engaging the Doctrine of Creation. Chapter 7, footnote 10.

[3] Margaret Barker, Creation, 287, quoted in Matthew Levering, Engaging the Doctrine of Creation. Chapter 7, footnote 10.

From All Creation Sings a devotional by Luann Budd available in Kindle and paperback formats.

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