Outdoors Nativity

John Donne wrote, “Nature is God’s greatest evangelist.” Yet the average American only spends 3% of his time outdoors. And that has shriveled our souls.

Indoors I can control light with the flip of a switch. Via the thermostat I can control the weather. And with the television remote I can control history; solve major problems in 30-minute sitcoms. Thus I begin to think of myself as large and in charge. The modern indoor life lulls me into a false sense of control.

If one studies Herod the Great in the Christmas story one discovers a delusional king, an ego maniac ensconced in his palace, refusing to leave to view the newborn Messiah. Yet the remainder of the people who play major roles in the birth of Jesus are used to living in the great out of doors. Mary and Joseph walk the eighty miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem’s stable. The Wise Men of Persia, sitting cross-legged atop their ziggurats as the heavens wheeled overhead, saw a star and followed it. Shepherds were abiding in the fields watching their flocks by night. And John the Baptizer, the preparatory prophet of Jesus, came to us out of the wilderness.

It is outside that cuts a man down to size among the mountains. It is out-of-doors we learn we are not in charge of sunrise or storm, frost or flood. And it is the Milky Way shining like diamonds on black velvet that fills us with wonder. In Romans 1, Paul the apostle to the gentiles tells of the creator—His power, His love of beauty and diversity, and law. Nature puts us in our place as creature, worshipper, wonderer. It reminds us we are subject to the laws of gravity every bit as much as we are to the laws of reproduction, death, and human decency. Outdoors reminds us, “It is He who hath made us and not we ourselves.”

So perhaps this Christmas season nothing can help us, Herods-of-our-palaces, prepare to welcome the Christ Child more than to go outside and simply look up.

The Reverend Stephen Crotts is pastor of Village Presbyterian Church in Charlotte Court House, VA. He is also the director of the Carolina Study Center, Inc., a campus ministry, located in Chapel Hill, NC. Pastor Crotts may be reached at carolinastudycenter@msn.com.