If God’s people are joyful so are the trees!

In my mother’s day, she considered anyone who was ‘nice’ must be a Christian. If people were respectful or generally lived by biblical standards, they passed her test.  

Today, ‘nice’ is not usually the criteria. Being ‘nice’ isn’t the exclusive property of any group and everyone knows ‘nice’ people who cheat on their taxes or their spouse, tell lies, or worse. Some of the people who take loaded guns into public places to kill at random have been described as “he seemed so nice” by the shocked folks who knew them.

This morning in my ‘read through the Bible in a year’ these verses in one of the minor prophets caught my attention:

Hear the word of the Lord, O children of Israel, for the Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or steadfast love, and no knowledge of God in the land; there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens, and even the fish of the sea are taken away. (Hosea 4:1–3)

God connects things that most of us do not connect. He describes the godlessness of people who were supposed to be ‘nice’ and how that played itself out in harmful behavior including bloodshed. Then He connects that reality with what is happening in their environment. The land is grieving. All living creatures are affected by their sin. He is not talking about human abuse of the land like pollution, but says the land was in mourning because these people rejected their Creator.

Is it possible that today’s spirit of godlessness has affected our environment in the same way? Many also neglect environmental responsibility, but is the world in bondage simply because so many have said NO to God?

I remember a NT passage that says the whole earth groans waiting for God’s people to appear, to come out of hiding, to be what we are supposed to be:

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Romans 8:18–21)

Mulling over these thoughts, I turned to today’s devotional reading. The following passage leaped out and yelled at me. I compared it to the one from Hosea that tells what happened because people were not paying attention to God and His Word, and the one in Romans that says something similar.

This passage gives a glimpse of the opposite by describing what happens when we are giving God’s Word our full attention. If it governs every part of our lives a radically different change happens:

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:16–17)

The verses that follow it continue describing change. Relationships become harmonious in marriage, family, work — and show that being a Christian is more than being ‘nice.’ It involves radical changes that one day even the environment will celebrate:

For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. (Isaiah 55:12)

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Jesus, I am dismayed when taking in the news of the day, hearing of the sins that also dismayed Hosea and You. Humanity has not changed. We have this deadly inclination to go our own way. Some try to be ‘nice’ about it, but You know that ‘nice’ never produces the same thing as what the Holy Spirit can do in a heart that is fully yielded to You, fully given to reading and obeying Your Word. Forgive us for our horrid neglect and for turning our backs. Forgive us for letting the whole earth grieve because we stop listening to You and doing what You say.

Today’s thankful list . . .

You connected these verses and showed me the power of Your Word to change lives and the world we live in.

That I feel sorrow about our disobedience and that obeying You matters to me.

Hearing a wonderful sermon on the way to be wise.

Spending the afternoon with former neighbors.

Finding a quilt shop that still has a fabric that sold out so fast I nearly missed it.

The peace in our location and the peace in our hearts.

All creation bows before Him

Sometimes the devotional writer makes statements that bypass what the Bible says. Today, he writes that worship “distinguishes man from all other forms of life on earth.” The psalmist and Isaiah would not say that. Besides telling us that “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1), other verses say:

“Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it! Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord, for he comes, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness, and the peoples in his faithfulness.” (Psalm 96:11–13, also see Psalm 98:8)

“For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” (Isaiah 55:12, also Isaiah 44:23)

We live in a condo complex that has tall aspens, those trees whose leaves seem to dance in the wind. When I watch them, Isaiah’s words come to mind and as the trees worship God with uplifted ‘hands’ I often do the same.

That said, the Scripture for today gives the reason for worship, not explicitly but it is in this passage:

“When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly.’ Then Abram fell on his face. And God said to him, ‘Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.’” (Genesis 17:1–8)

Abram was old and not able to do what he could do as a young man. Perhaps he was not as hung up on accomplishments as I have been, but he had to reach this place of helplessness before God declared again this covenant and the promise of offspring and fruitfulness. The reason for worship in this passage and in the entire Bible is that God does it. In our own strength, humanity can do nothing. The Bible says we do not seek God (Romans 3:10ff) or worship Him. We go our own way (Isaiah 53:6) and because of that, God stepped into our world to redeem us from our sin. He took the death we deserve and gave us the life we could never achieve without Him.

Because of that, I can worship Him . . . but the trees had it figured out long before I did!

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Jesus, today is a new day. I slept almost all of yesterday, but in sleep You blessed me with new understanding and with further healing. You are able to use all that happens for good for those who love You, and You even give us that ability to love.

“In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” (1 John 4:10–12)