[For an explanation/back-story of this little bit of flowery prose, see my post about it on my home blog.]

Today is a beautiful day. The sun has stayed mostly hidden behind some scattered cumulous clouds, and a gentle breeze provides some welcoming relief from the normally stifling Houston humidity. As I sat in on my bed reading I thought to myself: why am I sitting inside my stuffy little room when it is so nice outside? So I grabbed my notebook and Bible and jumped in my car and drove to the nearest place where I figured I could find some nature to sit and write in.

I decided to go to the creek that runs behind the Heatherwood clubhouse, and try to find somewhere relatively shady to plop down. Big Cypress Creek is normally a pretty serene place, at least as serene as you can get in the middle of a large residential zone. This time of year everything is bright green, and the grassy weeds on the broad banks–which slope down gently until they abruptly stop about ten feet from each other, in which chasm a lazy, dirty creek meanders along–is well over knee-high, and starting to be strewn with all the different varieties of Texas wildflowers. A fairly wide strip of level ground on either side of the banks is regularly mowed, and both sides have well-worn paths–one dirt, the other paved–which account for most of the human traffic I’ve encounter in the spot I chose.

That spot is a large, scraggly willow tree, that by some incredible feat of nature, has grown almost completely parallel to the ground, rather than the vertical orientation one might expect to find in trees. Towards the base of the tree the trunk is only a couple feet off the ground, and then it suddenly angles up to about chest-high, where it levels off and then zig-zags up a again a few more times. On the lowest little perch I sat down–it’s conveniently about the height of a low couch–facing a thin little forest of oaks and pines and assorted shrubs which encloses the banks on one side of the creek. At my back is an old, rusted, but quite sturdy iron passenger bridge that spans the seventy-five or so feet across the creek and connects my neighborhood to the paved path on the far side of the creek. The only sounds that reach my ears are the distant hum of traffic from the nearby road, the occasional quiet rumble of the gusting wind, the ever-present cricket chorus and songbird ensemble, and the occasional pop from the air-pistol of a couple junior high boys who seem intent on shooting a blue jay or a squirrel or something.

But now I’ve strayed far from what I originally intended to write about. As I sat in this beautiful, peaceful little spot and enjoyed the wholesome effects of simply being inside and admiring nature, I began to examine the tree I am sitting on. About an arms reach away from me a small shoot comes off the trunk of the tree, the only kind of branch on willows that has any leaves on it. But as I looked at it a little longer, I noticed that most of the leaves are half-eaten and discolored: a rare dark green, a sharp contrast to the bright, lively shades one normally finds in Houston during Spring. So I looked further down the branch and discovered that it is twisted at the base–a practically dead branch. I concluded that such was the cause of the branch’s demise, and continued to look around me and enjoy this beautiful day. But then as I stared out at the creek, I noticed that another branch right in front of me, not the object of my focus but in between me and what I was looking at, is also similarly disfigured like the other branch. The leaves are full of holes, and appear as if most of them had bites taken out of them from some herbivore, still others are completely gone, and all alike are that same sickly dark green color. So I looked up and down the branch, but this one looks like it should have been totally healthy, for it grows upwards, strong and straight. So then I glanced around at all the branches of this tree I had chosen to sit on, and to my surprise I noticed something which I have never seen before (and I have been by this tree many times): the entire tree is diseased. Every single leaf on that tree is eaten, or getting eaten, or about to be eaten, by whatever it is that has infected this tree. From a distance the tree looks perfectly healthy, a bit strange, perhaps, because of it’s horizontal growth, but nonetheless quite sturdy and green. But up close, as I sit right here next to it (or on it, I suppose), I can very clearly perceive that it is far from healthy, and in fact it is probably long past any hope of remedy. I doubt that any insecticide or fungicide or iron supplement or other fertilizer could nurse this tree back to health.

And it strikes me: this is the effect of the fall. No matter how strong nature may look, or how perfect nature may seem, or how wholesome nature may feel–She is still sin-sick. Creation is subjected to entropy and death and futility because of the Fall of Man from the paradise of the Garden, and so She will remain until after the last tear falls*. As I said at first, today is a beautiful day, and our Creator God is good, and so is the work that He has made. But oh, how my soul longs and groans with creation for the day when all things will be made right! When not only the new heaven, but the new earth will be revealed, and God will bring about the redemption of our bodies–our adoption as Sons and Daughters–and the restoration of all Creation!

But as for now, I will gladly soak in the sights and sounds from “the windows in the world, a little glimpse of all the goodness getting through”*, and the mere reflections of the glory to come. And I will keep loving and learning and longing to better know my great God and Savior, and I will keep crying out to Him: “Oh, let it be known, that You are the Lord of all of Creation! Oh, let it be seen, that You have the strength to make everything whole!”

And all the earth awaits and groans
The day of Resurrection
Our souls alike yearn for the day
When we shall reach perfection
For on that Day we’ll see His Face
To which we’ve been conformed
We’ll join the rest of God’s creation
Singing “Glory to the Lamb”

*Credit to Andrew Peterson