A Devotion from George Morrison

You will have a covenant with the stones of the field.  —Job 5:23

This vital connection of the outward world with the grandeur or the debasement of human moral nature is one of the great and neglected truths of Scripture. From the story of Eden with its idyllic environment, through the Fall with its curse of thistles and of thorns, on to the last picture of a new-created earth that will be in harmony with new-created humanity, everywhere the Word of God shows us the kinship between nature and human moral life. Think of what Paul says: “The whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” That is the Bible outlook on the world. The world is not a mere stage for a brief play. It is lit by our triumphs, shadowed by our guilt, touched by our sorrows, watered by our tears. By every right thing we do it is made richer. It grows meaner and poorer by every sin we sin. It is ourselves that are impressed upon the world. It is the story of our own hearts we read in nature. We talk of the voices of the winds and waves, but the voices are only the echo of our souls. And that is why, when you get a soul like Christ’s, infinitely beautiful and filled like a chalice with God, the meanest flower that blows has got a glory with which even the glory of Solomon cannot be compared.

We quicken or deaden everything we see by the life we live and the sins that we commit. For a bad man or woman there is really no summer, just as there is really no heaven.

What this summer will mean to you and how you will enjoy it is, after all, a moral and spiritual question. To be at peace with God is to be at peace with nature, and to love God is to see traces of him everywhere. As is my heart with God so is the world of this fresh June to me.