“Does a person’s right to believe anything mean that anything they believe is right? Granting someone the right to believe something is a matter of conscience; but going along with everything they believe is a matter of pure nonsense.” — G.K. Chesterton

Christians believe that there is an intelligent designer, and everything carries within its form and texture the signature of that Creator. No part of this material world is unconnected with God. Biblical religion cannot be lived apart from matter — the seen, felt, tasted, smelled and listened to.

As Eugene H. Peterson says, nothing merely happened along. “Choke cherries and tundra and weasels are not random accidents. Since everything is by design, no part of creation can be bypassed if we intend to live in the fullest possible relation to our Creator in his creation. Creation is our place for meeting God and conversing with him. The voice that spoke both the rose and the leviathan into being is the same voice that says, “Your sins are forgiven you, and invites us to call upon him in the day of trouble.”

John Calvin frequently referred to the world around us as a ‘theater of God’s glory’ (theatros in the Greek means the place where we take a good look). If we stop and look and ponder our own mountains, our own fishing creek with the ducks clinging to it in our own theater of God’s glory, an eagle plummets from cloud to field and takes a rabbit in its talons; for a few moments the two genesis creatures are in a terrible and tangled harmony. Like the turning of the leaves, matter is good. This theater of life and death has a truth to be told, a lesson from our creator.

We take box seats in this creation theater when we pray. Breathless in awe, laughing and crying, puzzled and dismayed, complaining and believing, we find our faith. True, all is not to our liking or understanding (who does not at times forget the hungry eagle and hope for the rabbit?) and during some scenes, we want to close our eyes. However, we should pray with eyes wide open because God speaks to us in time and place, in the cadence of the hours and the seasons. There is real and lasting faith to be found. The Lord God speaks, both in Scripture and creation, where God has shed his grace on thee.

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Finding Faith is written by area pastors. This week’s column comes from Pastor Taylor Camerer of Great Island Presbyterian Church, Lock Haven.