A.W. Tozer once said, “God dwells in His creation and is everywhere indivisibly present in all His works. He is transcendent above all His works even while He is immanent within them.”
God’s handiwork never ceases to amaze me, from the awesome vastness of the universe to the complex simplicity of a small green frog set upon a green blade of grass in someone’s backyard. Everything works together in concert, the music of the natural world perfectly composed by the perfect composer.
I was born in Homestead, Florida, in 1978, and though my immediate family moved to Newton County when I was 4, my two sets of grandparents stayed behind and lived out the rest of their lives in the Sunshine State. As a result, I spent most of my childhood summers in Miami and the Florida Keys. I always marveled at the immense power and restraint of the ocean. It could be both calming and unsettling. I learned of its violent side in 1992, when I flew home a few weeks before Hurricane Andrew roared ashore and obliterated much of South Florida, including the Air Force base where I had been born. The sights and stories from that storm stick with me to this day.
Nature remains a great mystery to us all. Yet somehow it serves as a reminder that we are finite beings—we have much more in common with the frog than we think—placed here purposefully by our Creator for only a short period of time. Perhaps Charles Spurgeon put it best: “Doth not all nature around me praise God? If I were silent, I should be an exception to the universe. Doth not the thunder praise Him as it rolls like drums in the march of the God of armies? Do not the mountains praise Him when the woods upon their summits wave in adoration? Doth not the lightning write His name in letters of fire? Hath not the whole earth a voice? And shall I, can I, silent be?”
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