Sacred Wonder

Noticing God's Creation as an Act of Praise

By Danae Templeton

I speak the language of Scripture best when I’m in the woods.

I pass a stream and think, “As a deer pants for the water, so my soul longs after you” (Ps. 42:1). I lower myself to the mosses, a forest in miniature, and think, “Even the rocks cry out” (Luke 19:40). I hear the call of the birds and remember, “…not one of them will fall to the ground” (Matt. 10:29). See the irises bent with spring rain—“A bruised reed he will not break” (Isa. 42:3). Pass under rhododendron arching over my path—“Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere” (Ps. 84:10).

It’s too easy and natural to walk through my home and see only the tasks that need to be done. I need to get that stain out. The air filter needs to be replaced. I should really paint that door. Even living in the middle of a forest, on the edge of national parkland, I forget to be drawn outside.

But when I do step on that trail, in the sound of my steps, the worries fall away. I am more able to sit still and know—to follow the rhythm of the forest.

The Sacred Act of Noticing

Noticing, to me, is a sacred act. Christ told us to have hearts like children—one way to do so is to notice every leaf and caterpillar that cross our path. Childlike wonder is a beautiful way to praise.

When I was a child, I imagined God creating the animals of the world at a huge drafting table in the sky, like the architects I saw in movies. I imagined Him creating a rhino and giggling, hunched over in the wrinkles around its horn and the weight of each massive step. I made dolls out of flowers and imagined them coming to life, envisioning that first breath of life into the dust of Adam. I stared into a campfire and watched the sparks fly up and pictured divine hands hanging each star in the spangled dark.