“Surely there is something in the unruffled calm of nature that overawes our little anxieties and doubts; the sight of the deep-blue sky and the clustering stars above seems to impart a quiet to the mind.” Jonathan Edwards
Here is a man who understands my longing, yeah my need for the mind quieting calm of nature. I worship the Creator, not the creation, as he did, but I hear and feel and smell and taste and see and contemplate and absorb the unruffled calm in retiring ridges, each paler than the one ahead of it, through the dispassionate wind and thunder, from the pelting rain or heavy rays of sunlight. I enjoy it in the form of a tree or the prominence of a rocky crag, the shimmer and pattern of the stars or the feeling of headlong intense growth in a meadow. I could continue for many phrases, but the quieting would better enter your soul if you thought, perhaps even wrote down, what details of nature calm your soul and then thanked God for them.
You may not have yet seen the sense in the title of this blog entry. Allow me to clarify (un-obscure?) it. I was looking back over the entries for the last few years for something I had previously said. I came across this title as a draft (therefore, unpublished). All that it contained was the quote from preacher and theologian, Jonathan Edward’s (1). Knowing that I frequently intend double meanings in my titles, I considered what backpacking trip this referred to, without success. The second meaning is herein retained, packing in calm to preclude future and overcome present drawdowns on my spirit, mind, and body. I serve others better when I am in a better place (2). Pursue a position of strength, stay strong, then expend your strength for God in the service of people according to God’s Word (3). You might serve them well by introducing them to the “unruffled calm of nature.” Don’t forget to point them toward the Creator of it all.
- Can you imagine how much more robust the calm of unsullied nature was in eighteenth century America? I would have liked to have experienced his New England nature and Audubon’s wilderness and Lewis and Clark’s continent. Might I in the renewed Creation of the Millennium, and even more so for its perfections?
- Strong of muscle and immunity physically, clear and curious of mind, and seeking of God and stable spiritually?
- The only things permanent: God, God’s Word, people
