Matter is good, creation is holy—God made it and blessed it. If that is so, we had best not be indifferent to what is around us. We can only perceive the world and receive it through the senses. As someone has said, “The senses are the window into the soul.” Classic Christian theology through the centuries has always proclaimed this and, at the best of times, it has not been embarrassed by the “physical nature of our existence.” After all, Jesus took the form of a body, lived in a body, ministered in a body, enjoyed life in a body, and said that one day he would resurrect our bodies. He even told us that stuff like bread, wine, water and beauty are given to pour life into us and make us remember him in thanksgiving. Eugene Peterson says it like this: “Matter is real. Flesh is good. Without a firm rooting in creation, religion is always drifting off into some kind of pious sentimentalism or sophisticated intellectualism.” (The Contemplative Pastor)

I am still shocked when people look at me like I have two heads when I say to them after a feast, “We just experienced an hour of the millennium,” or “this is a foretaste of the new heavens and new earth,” or “playing ball with my boys in the yard is the holiest thing I could be doing at this moment.” It is almost as if modern evangelicalism can only compute spirituality in terms of things we think about. Christianity in our day is suspicious about physical things and pleasure. It is almost as if we have to apologize for moments when we are intoxicated on the glory of God we see around us. What brings me to this tirade is, first of all, my garden. To step into my garden is to step into a magic kingdom. Last year my garden was a disaster. It taught me much humility, and so I have spent hours bringing in good dirt and manure. Then in April, after the nightmare of last year, which shattered my “gardener righteousness,” I buried seed in the ground and put out tiny tomato plants. In less than two months this same piece of dirt is like the Garden of Eden and just to walk in it is to be transported in to a world of mystery and wonder. I don’t see how I could be closer to God and “the way things are” than here in the garden. Properly seen, nature fleshes out the spiritual truths in the Bible. Without nature, they are nothing more than ieads. Ideas without enfleshment are like ghost looking for a body—unnatural.

The second thing that makes me pause to reflect is a recent trip. Anne Rachael and I went to a conference in Estes, Colorado, in the Rocky Mountains. Words are too cheap to describe the scenic glory that enfolds you. One day we went hiking at a high altitude where you can hardly breath and you are hiking with shorts and a tee shirt through snowfields that have yet to melt. On another day, we went rafting on the Poudre River. The water temperature was 38 degrees and they equipped us with

wet suits from head to toe. It is a wonderland of glory. To step outside is to be glad you are alive and have senses to drink it all in. The beauty draws you. You want to become a part of it. Every time you try to define it, it escapes you. Every time you try to quantify it, it eludes you. There is nothing left to do but to drink it in and utter thanks that you can walk among mysteries you can’t explain. I think the best thing I have every read that expresses what I have felt on occasion, as I have experienced God’s glory in the beauty of creation—whether in garden, mountain, or feast with wife and friends—is found in Annie Dillard’s book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. In the book, she describes a time she spends alone at a place called Tinker Creek. She writes as one who observes, participates in, and tries to find meaning in creation. At the end of the books she says this:

I think the dying prayer at the last is not “please,” but “thank-you” as a guest thanks his host at the door. Falling from airplanes, the people are crying thank you, thank you, all down the air; and the cold carriages draw up for them on the rocks. Divinity is not playful. The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy and fleet. There is nothing to be done about it, but ignore it, or see. And like Billy Bray I go my way, and my left foot says “Glory,” my right foot says “Amen”: in and out of Shadow Creek, upstream and down, exultant, in a daze, dancing, to the twin silvers trumpets of praise.

She is right; there is nothing to do but ignore the physical creation, think of it as sub-spiritual, or put your face in it and be overcome with wonder at the fact that God would give his children such a playground of glory and equip them with sensory apparatus to drink it all in. Someone once told me years ago that as a pastor, I spent too much time with Natural Theology, that is, what we see in creation—what we can taste, touch, hear, smell and see. He meant it as a put-down, but I told him it was the best compliment I had ever received. Without creation and incarnation, we become less human, sub-human even. We can’t create a vibrant spiritual life in our minds—Christianity is lived in the body! The summer is a good time to stick your face in life—real, physical, messy, mysterious—glorious. You need not apologize for wasting time on vacation, lingering over a feast, gazing with approval at your best beloved, or wasting time with a fishing pole with your children. Jesus hallowed these moments forever by coming and by beginning his official public ministry by spending three days at a wedding feast. Don’t try to be more spiritual than Jesus.