Simple Thoughts

The Beauty of Nature…… God’s Creation

I absolutely love nature because it is one of God’s most precious sacred creations. I always have loved nature and I’ve always felt at home out in the midst of it. When I was a boy of about 9 years old my father who was abusive left me out in the middle of the forest one day because he was angry with me. He was even more angry when he returned hours later and discovered that I was not afraid to have been left out in the middle of the wilderness alone! I considered that to be his problem not mine. In fact, I wanted to thank him for leaving me out there as it was one of the best days in my entire life. I never felt any fear in nature and I always had felt at home there even as a small child. On this particular day that lack of fear and that feeling of being home cemented themselves within me forever. I grew up and have been enjoying being out in the midst of nature ever since. God has surely given all of us a great blessing in the beauty and serenity that is found in nature.

Most people’s idea of “nature” is as near as the local city park. I think those parks are a fake kind of nature as they are not really natural at all but are engineered by city planners. It would do most of us well to get out into real nature in the middle of nowhere at least every few weeks. It clears the mind and makes one feel calm. It rejuvenates a person and makes them feel new.

One of the things I’ve notice about nature is when I’m out in it I feel very close to God. I can hear Him expressing His will for me more clearly. I can “feel” Him through my senses and I know He is very near. The prophets Muhammad and Jesus (pbut) spend a lot of time in the midst of nature. Jesus used to retire into the wilderness frequently away from the crowds who followed him so he could restore himself and commune with God. Muhammad did the same. In fact, almost all of the prophets did this. There is something about being out in the middle of God’s creation, nature, that makes one feel alive fully and that puts a person in close touch with God. It restores us in mind, spirit, and body and gives us calm, serenity, beauty, and strength. And there is so much beauty in nature from seeing a newborn fawn walking through a meadow with its mother to sitting by the banks to a stream watching fish of all kinds pass by to watching and listening to the birds in the trees sing their songs of pleasant glory to our Creator. God really did some fantastic work when He created nature.

Sadly, modern society teaches us in various ways that nature is to be feared, that it is our enemy. I’ve never agreed with that societal garbage at all because I know it is not true. Yes, nature can be harsh as well as peaceful but it is not our enemy. Humanity is a part of nature and nature is a part of humanity and that is a fact no matter how the modern world with all its false wisdom attempts to spin it to the contrary. We’ve exiled ourselves from nature and from the natural and we are trying to be something we are not. We’ve erected massive cities of steel and concrete and call them “natural.” Cities are NOT natural envionments for mankind, in fact, nature is. Yes I’m happy to live in the fake forest of steel and concrete with it’s niceties but we also need to remember nature and that we are apart of it and get out into it more so we remember who we are and who we are not.

We cannot and we must not completely disconnect ourselves from nature. To do so would completely skew our self concepts as men and women. It would also skew our concept of God. MAN created the cities not God. The city is, thus, a creation of man, a fake creation. Nature is the creation of God on the other hand and is a real creation. The wisdom of the world would have us believe the opposite and that nature is our worst enemy. Such wisdom is the wisdom of the Jinn, fallen angels and devils. The Jinn do not wish us to remember our connection with nature and, thus, our connection with God because the Jinn would be overjoyed to see humankind turn completely against God. That is the final objective of the Jinn and we must NOT allow that to happen!

God has created so much beauty in nature that it really is endless. Every time I go out into the wilderness I’m fascinated by seeing something new, something I’ve never seen or noticed before despite all of the time I’ve spent in my life being out in the wilderness. God always shows us surprises in nature, some new beauty that before has gone unnoticed by our eyes. Some new blessing really.

I can’t help but notice that in the Torah, Gospel, and Qur’an that God usually works through nature. An example is the deluge of Noah’s Flood. This does NOT mean that nature is God of course but what it does mean is that God uses nature as a tool to achieve His Will. Sometimes He uses it to destroy and teach a hard lesson to people. Other times He uses nature to bless a people greatly. Whatever the case God often works through nature and Jesus even foretold that in the Last Days that God would show signs in the heavens and through nature such as warning like huge earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, storms, etc. Nature can give us a clue to God’s Will and to God’s Intentions if only we open our eyes and ears especially in these times in which we live today.