Beauty and Fallenness

I’m in Austria right now, at the edge of a beautiful lake in the Alps. It’s our annual Spring Getaway conference for WorldVenture. It’s a time of rest, refreshment, and catching up on mission business.

Clear mountain lake with a breathtaking reflection

Normally when I see a view like this, it reminds me of the great God we serve. The big mountains are a reminder of how small I am and how big a Creator we worship. In one of our sessions we watched this video about God’s greatness as seen through the magnitude of His creation of the universe.

Beautiful lake

Yet this time, as I looked out over the lake with a gorgeous backdrop of majestic mountains, the Psalm I had read in the morning came to mind.

¹¹Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;
let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
¹²let the field exult, and everything in it!
Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy
¹³before the LORD, for he comes,
for he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness,
and the peoples in his faithfulness.

– Psalm 96:11-13

The murmuring water praises God

The water, the trees, the mountains, all of that does far more than pointing to God’s glory. Yes, we can look at the mountains and see God’s beauty, yet we can also hear the mountain’s cry for redemption. Normally I think of mountains as something almost perfect, but what does it mean that even they are crying for God to come judge the world?

"Dear hikers, please stay on the path, not in the grass, so that people can easily tell the difference between you and the livestock."

It means that even the beauty seen in the Alps is not perfect. It’s marred and broken compared to the way God originally intended it to be. We can’t even walk on the lush grass! In my personal opinion, perfect grass would not die when walked upon. If its purpose is to provide a cushion for our feet, it shouldn’t be ruined by fulfilling its purpose!

Dear people, big and small, please don't step on our food!

Of course, another purpose of grass is to provide energy to animals as they eat it. But that’s all a side note.

mountain path

The point is, all of creation is longing for redemption. It’s not just people, although we recognize our fallenness most often as we deal with natural disasters, emotional trauma, physical disease, and broken relationships.

¹⁹For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. ²⁰For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope ²¹that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. ²²For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. ²³And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

– Romans 8:19-23

Even imperfect creation is beautiful.

I do look forward to the day when I can see the creation as God intended it to be!

A while ago I listened to a sermon by Timothy Keller. In this message, he made a beautiful point about feeling at home in this world. He said that if we stepped out on another planet without any special equipment, we would not last long because the atmosphere is not made to sustain our life. We would be crushed by gravity, melt into oblivion, or suffocate due to lack of oxygen and breathable gasses. Clearly, we are not designed to live on another planet, or the other planet is not designed to support human life. Yet here on earth, we still don’t last forever. We last a lot longer than we would on other planets, but the fact that the earth cannot sustain our lives much past 100 years shows that we are not designed for planet earth in its current form. We were made for another place! I’m not talking about some random planet in a distant galaxy. I mean this planet earth before the fall, before sin entered the world!

We are made for a place even better than this!

Looking back at the Romans 8 passage, we see that there is a promise of redemption. The earth will be restored when our relationship with Him is transformed by completing our adoption process.

Verse 23 mentions our firstfruits of the Spirit. What does that mean?

Restoration is coming

One of my friends here belonged to a Messianic Jewish church in Colorado. She always has lots of insights into connections between the Old and New Testaments. She explained that in the Feast of Firstfruits, a priest would give the first sprigs of the crop that had just sprouted. It was an offering expressing thankfulness and trust: thankfulness that God brought the growth, and trust that He would continue to be faithful and bring in the rest of the harvest.

Hut in mountains

Jesus himself is called the firstfruits.

²⁰But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. ²¹For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. ²²For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. ²³But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.²⁴Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power.

– 1 Corinthians 15:20-24

So like the firstfruits offering in the old testament, we are reminded that the firstfruits (Jesus) and His resurrection from the dead are a promise from God that His new life is just the beginning. The harvest is coming. We are the rest of the harvest! How do we know that the imperfection of the world will be repaired? How do we know that the problems will one day be fixed? We know it because the problem of death has been conquered in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. He died and is now alive. Do you trust in His promise to bring new life to this old and rotting world?

New life and growth