Messages from the Father in Nature
Image credit: ©GettyImages/Boonyachoat
One time in prayer, Jesus and I bonded over how much we love understanding spiritual truths through what we witness in nature.
Whenever I am having a difficult time explaining something to someone, I almost always resort to an analogy found in nature. God has just made it so clear to me how he speaks to us through what we see in nature. Perhaps this is why I have always loved nature documentaries and being outdoors.
Spiritual truths are plentiful in nature. Rainbows appear after heavy storms. Instead of running away from tornados, herds of buffalos run straight into them to survive. There is a parasite in rainforests that targets ants that have wandered far from the colony. Once they have attached to the ant, they make it act strangely and eventually commit suicide. While forest fires are devastating, their destruction leads to even more trees. We only see and appreciate stars at night. Roses are beautiful but they have thorns. The brightest and most beautiful frogs are often the deadliest. Trees go through the process of detachment every year through the shedding of their leaves. Our hearts are vital to the health of all our organs. Seeds start in a period of darkness while underground before they break through and embrace life above.
This is what I see and think about whenever I am outdoors – how much our heavenly Father is communicating with us through everything around us, including the nature around us that we take for granted. He truly expresses himself through nature, which is what makes nature beautiful, for true beauty is the extent to which something reflects God.
Now, I am not saying that we should take a purely naturalistic approach and only learn about God through what we can perceive from the beautiful creations around us. I simply think that it is extremely fascinating and such a gift that we can learn so much from the environment God created for us. It makes sense why Jesus uses such phenomena in nature to teach us about the Father. May we not take this for granted.
Beyond the glimpses of truth that are revealed to us from the natural environment, we can also experience the great love of God. When we feel the warmth of the sun, the coolness of the shade provided by the trees on Locust, and the beauty of the flowers, we ought to be reminded of how the Father created these things just for us. He created it all out of an act of love.
We can see this through an exchange between Servant of God Luisa Piccareta and Jesus on April 23, 1912:
“In the teachings given to Luisa, Jesus wanted to show us how to reciprocate God’s love. One time, when Luisa’s soul left her body and Jesus took her around the universe. She noticed that from all of the creation out there, she could hear Jesus’ voice saying to her: ‘I love you,’ ‘I love you.’
Then Jesus turned to Luisa and said: “Where is your ‘I love you’ to Me?”
He explained to her that God loves us so much that he placed ‘I love you’ on everything we see. So every ray from the sun carries an ‘I love you’, every drop of rain, every flower, every bird; God created with love, and all creation speaks to us of love.
When he mentioned another time, Luisa asked: “Why did you create so many bugs?” and Jesus said: “I could not stop saying ‘I love you’!”
Jesus explains to all of us “...my love for mankind is great. See how the sunlight invades the earth? If you could make many atoms from that light, in those atoms of light you would be able to hear my melodious voice, repeating to you one by one: ‘I love you…I love you’ in such a way that you wouldn’t have time to count them. You would remain forever submerged in love. Yet in fact I am saying to you: ‘I love you…I love you’ in the light that fills your eyes. ‘I love you’ in the air that you breathe. ‘I love you’ in the hiss of the wind that strikes your hearing. ‘I love you’ in the heat and the cold that you feel with your touch. ‘I love you’ in the blood that flows through your veins. ‘I love you’ in the beating of your heart - it speaks to you of the beating of my heart. ‘I love you’ in every action of your hands. ‘I love you’ in every step that you take with your feet. For nothing occurs inside or outside of you, without a corresponding act of my love towards you. One of my ‘I love yous’ does not wait for another. And your ‘I love you’ - how many are there for Me?”