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Nature speaks about God: The Bible and nature

Lynne Baab • Friday May 4 2018

In our Seattle church, children bring flowers on Easter Sunday, mostly daffodils and tulips, with a few hot house flowers like carnations thrown in. The flowers are inserted in a cross specially designed for Easter. At my friend’s church in Oamaru, New Zealand, children also bring flowers on Easter to place on a cross. Because Easter is in the late summer in the Southern Hemisphere, the flowers are mostly roses and dahlias.

Different flowers, different seasons, different locations. Same God, same Easter, same celebration of Jesus’ triumph over death.

The cross speaks of Good Friday, Jesus’ sacrifice for us, and God’s great redemption...

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Nature speaks about God: Patterns in God’s speech

Lynne Baab • Friday April 27 2018

When we think about the ways God speaks through nature, a key passage is Psalm 119:1-4:

“The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”

The first verse tells us the content of the words: the glory of God. The remaining verses describe the nature of the speech. It goes spreads to the end of the earth, speaking without words or audible...

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Nature speaks about God: The miracle of trees

Lynne Baab • Thursday April 19 2018

I have always loved trees. They speak to me of God’s creativity, complexity, beauty and provision.

In high school, we had three young birch trees in our back yard. To me, they looked like young girls dancing, reflecting the joy of living in God’s beautiful world.

As a university student, I took hundreds of photos of the sun shining through trees. I particularly admired the translucence of maple leaves backlit by the sun, speaking to me of the beauty of the Light of the World.

I often remember the trees from places I’ve traveled. The first time I travelled to New Mexico and Colorado...

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Nature speaks about God: familiar and unfamiliar landscapes

Lynne Baab • Thursday April 12 2018

God speaks to me through places in nature that are familiar and places that are new and different.

I was so amazed when we moved to Shiraz, Iran, at the way the forms of the mountains were so visible. That area of Iran had been deforested many centuries earlier. For someone who had come to Iran from the heavily forested, green Seattle area, those bare spines of rock and precisely delineated hillsides tugged at my heart in a totally unexpected way.

The lush tropical vegetation of Puerto Rico and Hawaii that I experienced on vacation also spoke to me. Those amazing bright colored...

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