Art to Heart Invitation

Albert Bierstadt: Rocky Mountains, Landers Peak

©2002 by Jeff Dugan

Don’t you just love the beauty and grandeur of nature?  Whether it’s a magnificent landscape like this, or a simple, magical flower’s petal, there’s something about God’s glorious creation that calls to us, that invites us, that enthralls us.  Albert Bierstadt spent his entire career creating beautiful paintings like this one, trying to capture the essence of the awe and wonder that nature engenders in our souls.

So when environmentalists tell us that it’s wrong to destroy this irretrievable creation in our pursuit of more money and more things, we know they are right.

But I think there’s a deeper significance to the allure nature holds for us.  It is such a fundamental part of our being, and moves us so profoundly – it’s almost as if we were created as part of nature itself.  Which, of course, we were.  It’s possible, I think, that in our love for nature God has preserved for us a reminder of the peace and intimacy we enjoyed with Him in the Garden of Eden.

So when we experience nature’s beauty, our response is, at its core, a yearning to return to the place and time where we walked hand in hand, and heart in heart with the Creator.

Some people would have you believe that’s impossible.  But the miraculous good news we celebrate as Christians is that in Jesus Christ, God has shown us the way back to Eden – where we can live each day in the security, the peace, the joy, and the love that God intended from the beginning, and about which all of creation continues to whisper to us as it calls to us, “come home…come home.”