Living between worlds

Many people don't realize it, but we live in two worlds. The one that most people see, the one we try to exist in, is the world we have created around us. A climate controlled house, a climate controlled vehicle, a paved road, a mowed and weed controlled yard, a carefully constructed office, a world that is quite tame. Everything has been made to be safe, convenient, and comfortable. The other world is the wild world, the one we can't control. Mountains and rivers and forests and deserts and oceans. As recent news stories have informed us, these worlds are dangerous. It's hard out there, people get hurt. People die. So we try to tame that world too. Forests are cut down, rivers are dammed, and for the things that we can't fully tame, we create rescue squads to save people from those dangers.

But I sometimes wonder, are we saving people from the dangers of the wild, or are we slowly killing ourselves with a tame world. We're substituting the world that God made for the world we have created. We long for Heaven, but we're doing our best to isolate ourselves from the world that God called "very good".

I've had the pleasure to spend time with, and get to know, people who really love the great outdoors. They've found something out there and they love it. They know that it is "very good". The sad thing is, many come to worship the world, instead of the One who created it.

"For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles." Romans 1:20-23

At the same time, many of the Christians I know are the ones who immerse themselves in the tame world. It saddens me that the people who should have the greatest appreciation for God's creation aren't interested, the people who are the most interested in the creation have no appreciation for the One who created it.

Psalm 19 is what comes back to me each time I go into the outdoors, I'll often print it and carry it with me on the trail. King David begins with his joy of the revelation of God in the world He created. This leads him to understand the goodness of the even clearer revelation that God has given to mankind in His Word. In the end, these bring David to humbleness before God. David looks at the grandeur of the creation and the goodness of God's Word to us, and he realizes how small, yet how loved he is.

I'll admit that I do much to live in the controlled, tame world. I'm not an advocate of escapism either, we must spend time in the broken world so that we can spread the new of a better world made available to us. However, I have to frequently revisit the world that God created to remind myself of what has been offered us.

I often dream of what heaven is going to look like. I look forward to being with the Lord, I pray that He says to me "well done good and faithful servant, come and enter into your master's joy." However, I see things in our world now and dream of what they might look like once they are restored to what they were before humans jacked everything up with sin. To enjoy the mountains and rivers. That maybe I can kayak the wild rivers without fear (will they have kayaks in heaven?). That God allows us to fly. However, my one fear about heaven is where it talks about there will be no night. I like night. There's a peace about night time, when things become quiet and the world becomes settled. But I know that God is good, and we won't have anything to complain about with heaven.

Thus the human dilema, to live in a fallen world, to find hints of what should be in the created world, to have the hope of the restored world to come.