A Canadian pen-friend and I have exchanged national magazines for more than forty years. His Canadian publication arrived in the mail this week.  As usual it was brim-full of very readable articles and the kind of photography that leads one to marvel at the wonders of God’s creation. The concluding pages contained some reflections by a man who had just done some hiking in a national park in the Canadian Rockies. Having spent some days there myself some years ago I could understand the writer waxing lyrical about the beauty of the mountain trails of British Columbia.

However some of what he wrote gave cause for some reflections of my own. He wrote that a “deep connection to nature just happens here” and that it “invigorates and recharges you”. His next words particularly struck me. “For many, including myself, this is church, this is spiritual rejuvenation, the place to connect to source and unwind.”

Many of us, I’m sure, can relate to that. Okay, the author didn’t mention God - at least not directly. But isn’t that what church is supposed to be all about - connecting with God? Or, as he called it: ‘connecting to source’? And many of us would say that spiritual rejuvenation is really nothing else than revitalising our relationship with God again.

There are parallels between finding God in nature and finding God in a church. The Bible makes that very clear too. Psalm 19 immediately springs to mind. “The heavens are telling the glory of God.” And doesn’t the apostle Paul remind us in Romans chapter 1 that God has left His very clear fingerprints in the things He has made? Paul even tells us that this evidence for God in nature is strong enough to leave human beings without excuse. It’s for this reason too that both Psalm 14 and Psalm 53 remind us that it is only the fool who says that there is no God.

The closing lines of the article in the Canadian magazine put it well, “Enjoying this beautiful British Columbia heaven on earth is a spiritual gift... each hike is a reserved front seat in nature’s cathedral.”

Okay, I know that all this can easily become an excuse to avoid the real “church”. And I’ve often heard that excuse over the years, “I don’t go to church because I worship God in nature.” I guess that if I wanted to be super critical I might even suggest that this fellow probably doesn’t worship God at all - that Nature (with a capital ‘N’) has become his substitute god; his idol. Maybe! But where does that leave us when it comes to some of those ‘nature psalms’ like Psalm 19 and Psalm 104? Surely, the Christian, of all people, ought to value nature as God’s handiwork. We see His power in a thunderstorm, His artistic skills in a glorious sunset, his wisdom in the birth of a newborn baby. We’d be sadly mistaken if we thought that God cannot be worshipped in nature.

The problem though is that God’s revelation of Himself in nature is not the whole story - not by a long shot. Even a casual reading of Psalm 19 would make that abundantly clear. The first half of that song is all about God revealing himself throughout the world in nature’s silent speech. But the second half of that Psalm reminds us that God’s revelation of himself in nature is incomplete. There is also the Word in which God has revealed His will - and we can’t learn about that from nature. In fact that song mentions not only God’s laws, ordinances and precepts but it also speaks of our errors, hidden faults and being blameless - things we don’t learn about from a hike in a national park. When all is said and done that takes us to our need for Jesus. We need Him to remove our sins and change our lives. And that’s the rub isn’t it? Nature can tell us of God’s greatness as our Creator but it can’t speak the language of God’s love as our Redeemer. It may teach us much about God’s power, glory and wisdom but it can’t tell us about the cross on which Jesus died as our sin-bearing substitute.

So let’s by all means enjoy the “front seat in nature’s cathedral” but let’s not neglect being reminded of the good news of the gospel in the front pew of our local church.

John Westendorp