This is part 2 of a 3-part series. View the entire series here.
For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see His invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature. – Romans 1:20 NLT
Notice the Birds
I’m one of five children. I have two older brothers and two younger sisters, and my youngest sister is quite a bit younger than the rest of us.
I remember when she was two or three years old, she loved being outside, so I’d take her for afternoon walks around our neighborhood. I’d put her in her stroller, and almost as soon as we started down the sidewalk she’d point up to the sky and say, “Birdie! Birdie!” And I’d think, hey, you’re right, there are birds chirping. I didn’t even notice. Even to a teenager, birds were already becoming sort of boring. They’re everywhere. You see them all the time. At a certain point your brain just starts tuning them out.
But to a two year old, the whole world is brand new. The whole world is full of wonder and excitement. When we were outside, my sister wasn’t just hearing the birds—she was noticing them.
Don’t Let God Become Regular
The unfortunate reality of life is that the things we’re exposed to on a regular basis very quickly become regular to us. If you grow up near the beach, the beach becomes regular. If you grow up near the mountains, the mountains become regular. If you see a rainbow after every storm, rainbows become regular.
When we let these things become regular, we stop seeing them as emissaries of the wonder and beauty and majesty of God.
And I think sometimes we do the same thing to God Himself.
Maybe we phone in our quiet time, we rush through our prayers, we stop digging into God’s Word because we think we’ve discovered everything there is to know about Him. We let Him become regular. Boring.
There’s a quote from author and theologian G.K. Chesterton that says,
“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again; to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”
I don’t think I’d ever thought about God “exulting in monotony”—continuing to create something in the same way over and over again simply because He loves and delights in it. But what an incredible thought it is! God has kept making the same flowers and the same animals, He keeps turning the same seasons, He keeps making human beings in His image—because He loves us and enjoys us. Even to the Creator Himself, creation is full of wonder.
So if God doesn’t let His own creation become regular to Him, then we—His creation—can’t let God become regular to us.
Don’t Let Creation Become Regular
The Bible—and the psalms in particular—is filled with references to creation. Psalm 104 says,
“You placed the world on its foundation…You clothed the earth with floods of water, water that covered even the mountains…The birds nest beside the streams and sing among the branches of the trees…You cause grass to grow for the livestock and plants for people to use…The trees of the LORD are well cared for—the cedars of Lebanon that He planted...You made the moon to mark the seasons, and the sun knows when to set.” (NLT)
We can’t see God with our eyes, but we can see the world around us. So part of how we understand and conceptualize God Himself is in relation to what He’s created (Psalm 19; Romans 1:20). We’d be unwise to let the wonder of creation grow dim in our eyes or our hearts, because, to a certain extent, it’s what reminds us of God and helps us to know Him better.
Of course, the fallen world as we see it now reflects only the smallest fraction of God’s actual majesty and power. But until Jesus returns and restores all things to their original design, it’s all we have and we should enjoy it for all it has to offer.
Worship and Wonder
God made mountains and oceans. He made deserts and tundras. He made outer space and the vast expanses of the universe. All of these things cry out in worship to Him (Luke 19:40). He made you and me to bear His image, bring Him glory, and demonstrate His love to everyone and everything.
He still holds it all, He’s still making it all, and He’s still delighting in making it all.
I think that if we let creation become exciting to us again—if we, for instance, take a few seconds out of our day to observe something as regular as a bird—we may just find that God also becomes new and exciting to us again.
He deserves our wonder and our worship and our honor. He deserves to be the most irregular thing in our lives.
