God and the enviornment

I was talking to an enviormentalist the other day and I was so enthralled by their love of nature and a desire to protect the beauty of the natural enviorment. Some time later I was talking to a developer and they were telling how they loved the beauty and the wonder of nature. I said, you almost sound like an enviormentalist - they laughed and said, I think I am, but I also think that I disagree politically with the enviormentalist. I love the beauty of nature in the Pacific Northwest. I grew up here and spent 51 years hiking in the mountains, walking the sea shore, and just looking around amazed at what I believe it the most beautiful part of the world.

The Bible says that The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Psalms 19:1-3

What a beautiful concept, nature speakes to every language and every culture. It's language is understood by all humanity. This is what we see at Washington Cathedral as we worship in front of a beautiful water fall. People in grief, people whose pace of life is just crazy, people who need to deepen their spiritual life and regain their center are touched by the God of nature who speaks to them in ways that an agnostic or a fundamentalist can begin to understand.

I hope the beauty of nature and the love of the enviorment permeats our whole campus. I hope it inspires each of us to take care of the careful ballance of our eco system that we live in. I pray that conservative and liberals can have conversations about our precioius enviorment that go beyond the political monologues which now exist. I think it is going to take a whole bunch of descent discussion by kind people of differing oppinions before we begin to gain any kind of consensus upon which we can move forward.

What do you think.

Pastor Tim White - Washington Cathedral