{"id":22498,"date":"2023-06-13T09:03:44","date_gmt":"2023-06-13T13:03:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22498"},"modified":"2023-06-13T09:12:36","modified_gmt":"2023-06-13T13:12:36","slug":"22498","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22498","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-embed-handler wp-block-embed-embed-handler wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Evidence - Josh Baldwin (Lyrics)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/3lDvD-O9xhg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">God\u2019s Sacred Book of Nature<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Richard Rohr believes that nature has been revealing God long before the Bible and Church came to be: &nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nature itself is the primary Bible. The world is the locus of the sacred and <strong>provides all the metaphors that the soul needs for its growth. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you scale chronological history down to the span of one year, with the Big Bang on January 1, then our species,\u00a0<em>Homo sapiens<\/em>, doesn\u2019t appear until 11:59 p.m. on December 31. That means our written Bible and the Church appeared in the last nanosecond of December 31. I can\u2019t believe that God had nothing to say until the last moment. Rather, as both Paul and Thomas Aquinas say, <strong>God has been revealing God\u2019s love, goodness, and beauty since the very beginning through the natural world of creation (<\/strong>see Romans 1:20). \u201cGod looked at everything God had made and found it very good\u201d (Genesis 1:31). \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Acknowledging the intrinsic value and beauty of creation, elements, plants, and animals is a major paradigm shift for most Western and cultural Christians. We <strong>limited God\u2019s love and salvation to our own human species, <\/strong>and even then, we did not have enough love to go around for\u00a0<em>all<\/em>\u00a0of humanity! God ended up looking quite miserly and inept, to be honest. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read, instead, the Book of Wisdom:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p><strong>How dull are all people who, from the things-that-are, have not been able to discover God-Who-Is, or by studying the good works have failed to recognize the Artist&#8230;. Through the grandeur and beauty of the creatures we may, by analogy, contemplate their Author (13:1, 5). [1]\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Author Barbara Mahany reads God\u2019s sacred Book of Nature in her own backyard and throughout creation:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I read intently the Book of Nature, even here in my humble plot of earth &#8230; where a rambunctious tucked-away garden offers me respite and a place for genuflection&#8230;.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Into its pages I step in the murky hour just before the dawn, before the rising sun stages its rehearsal, bleeds pink into the edge of night. It\u2019s where you might find me, nose pressed to the glass, when the softening winter sky at last exhales and the first tumble of snowflakes fall, blanketing the world in a quiet like no other. Or, at twilight, the in-between hour when day dissolves into darkness, when on a summer\u2019s eve I surrender to the rising surround sound of crickets and keep watch till the starkeepers trot out the stars&#8230;.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so the beautiful, the majestic, the intimate, and the sweeping is pressed onto the pages of the&nbsp;<em>librum naturae<\/em>, the Book of Nature. [2]&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Mahany shares this observation from Evelyn Underhill (1875\u20131941), an English theologian and mystic:&nbsp;<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>The very meaning of Creation is seen to be an act of worship, a devoted proclamation of the splendour, the wonder, and the beauty of God. In this great\u00a0<em>Sanctus<\/em>, all things justify their being and have their place. [3] \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">[39] Troubled Soul <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Troubled soul, thou are not bound to feel but thou art bound to arise. God loves thee whether thou feelest or not. Thou canst not love when thou wilt, but thou art bound to fight the hatred in thee to the last. Try not to feel good when thou art not good, but cry to Him who is good. He changes not because thou changest. Nay, He has an <strong>especial tenderness of love toward thee for that thou art in the dark and hast no light, and His heart is glad when thou doest arise and say, \u201cI will go to my Father.<\/strong>\u201d\u2026Fold the arms of thy faith, and wait in the quietness until light goes up in thy darkness. For the arms of thy Faith I say, but not of thy Action: bethink thee of something that thou oughtest to do, and go to do it, if it be but the sweeping of a room, or the preparing of a meal, or a visit to a friend. <strong>Heed not thy feeling: Do thy work.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald (p. 22). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>God\u2019s Sacred Book of Nature Richard Rohr believes that nature has been revealing God long before the Bible and Church came to be: &nbsp; Nature itself is the primary Bible. The world is the locus of the sacred and provides all the metaphors that the soul needs for its growth. \u00a0 If you scale chronological [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22498"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22498"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22503,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22498\/revisions\/22503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}