Wendell Berry on Creation
It’s been a while since I posted but I intend to fix that. Christmas hit hard and I ran into rough ground with the book I had introduced, “The Abiding Presence”. I was excited to read it but got badly bogged down in chapter 2 and 3. I intend to persist. In the meantime let me comment on this. Last weekend we had Dr. Waltke at Christ Community to speak on Psalm 15 and we got to hang out as well. He was great as usual. Then on Monday night a group from church ended up going to hear Wendell Berry speak at Stetson University.
Me and Connie and Adam, meet up with Kyle and Carlyn Whitehead, Clay and Michelle Cass and Nathan Mowery. We also ran into Bill Andrews. Berry was inspiring. It’s not just what he says but who he is and what he represents. His topic was, “Simple Solutions, Package Deals, and the 50-year Farm Bill”. I won’t try to compress his lecture at this time. I didn’t even take notes, I just wanted to enjoy listening. But I will share a quote from Berry from an earlier essay. In this quote he is talking about doing good work in the real world and he references the words of Moses from Deuteronomy. Even without the larger context you can appreciate the point he makes.
To work without pleasure or affection, to make a product that is not both useful and beautiful, is to dishonor God, nature, the thing that is made, and whomever it is made for. This is blasphemy: To make shoddy work of the work of God. But such blasphemy is not possible when the entire Creation is understood as holy and when the works of God are understood as embodying and thus revealing His spirit. In the Bible we find none of the industrialist’s contempt or hatred for nature. We find, instead, a poetry of awe and reverence and profound cherishing, as in these verses from Moses’ valedictory blessing of the twelve tribes:
And of Joseph he said, Blessed of the Lord be his land, for the precious things of heaven, for the dew, and for the deep that croucheth beneath,
And for the precious fruits brought forth by the sun, and for the precious things put forth by the moon,
And for the chief things of the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of the’ lasting hills,
And for the precious things of the earth and fullness thereof, and for the good will of him that dwelt in the bush. (Deut 33:13-16)
Larry is the senior pastor at 
Dave & I were planning on attending this lecture but Dave got sick and we weren’t able to go. It sounds like we missed a good night.
Reading this quote makes me think how many people actually go to their jobs everyday focused solely on their tasks, which have been given to us by God, instead of the One who gave it to us. We aren’t meant to be drained from our work but to draw from the deep well of His strength and drink in the majesty of His glory to replenish us for the tasks at hand. Without that replenishing we are weakened and unable to find rest for our souls. Left too long in this weakened state our bodies will become damaged and out of balance. The Lord wants to bless us for our hard work but He wants to bless us with Himself. We need to let Him. In the frenetic pace of our current times we need to take time; enjoy the beauty of the Lord around us not only in nature but in the people he has placed in our lives. If we spend time with Him we will feel the blessing of decompression and the fullness of breath