Job 12:7-8, “But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee.”
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” – from Walden by Henry David Thoreau
I have been feeling very unsettled spiritually of late. As I entered into my sixth decade of my life, I started to become more and more aware of my mortality. I have walked with God all my life. At the age of twelve I accepted Jesus as my personal Savior and have grown to love Him more and more. He has been my dearest friend down through the years and my hunger and thirst to know Him and grow closer to Him only becomes more intense as I continue to learn more.
I have sat through hundreds, yea thousands of sermons and teachings throughout my life. I have attended Bible College and Seminary, I have earned advanced degrees in Biblical studies and Biblical languages. Yet, I hunger, I long, I groan to know and experience God in ways that are deeper, richer, and fuller. I want to use every moment while I am here on earth to find something new and exciting about my Lord. I have found that He is a well that will never run dry, that I have not even begun to explore the deep and beautiful caverns of His heart. Yes, one day I shall leave this world and I will have the fullness of knowledge of God. Yet while here on earth I am painfully aware there are things I can only experience in this world that I will never experience in eternity.
In Psalm 6:5 David says, “For in death [there is] no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks?” That word for thanks in the Hebrew is yadah which in its Semitic origins has the idea of shooting an arrow. Tracing this word through its Canaanite origin I find it is speaking of the result of an act. This is a praise following a certain act. In this context David is saying that once he has entered eternity there will be no need for God to act to deliver him or rescue him from a terrifying situation. In eternity he will be in eternal peace with God and there will be no need to call upon God for deliverance. Yet, there is a special joy in facing a difficult situation and experiencing God’s deliverance, a special joy in giving thanks to God for His deliverance. In heaven we can never praise God for a healing for we will never be sick. We can never praise God for a financial miracle for we will have no need of finances. In heaven we can never praise God in the midst of suffering and pain for we shall never know suffering and pain. In heaven we will never know the gentle, loving touch of God to heal our broken heart, for we will never experience a broken heart. He has promised to wipe away all tears. Yet, our only opportunity to experience this special joy of having Him wipe away our tears, to praise Him in the midst of trial, a joy that not even the angels can experience, is a joy we can only know while we are in the flesh. It is said the angels do not know the joy of redemption for they do not need to be redeemed. Yet, I will never forget that joy, that special joy when I was twelve years old and I felt that cleansing forgiveness of His blood in receiving that gift of redemption. I remember dancing around and singing that old hymn, “There’s a new name written down in glory and it’s mine.” Show me an angel who knows that joy, where in heaven will we experience a joy like that?
Every day we walk this earth we are given an opportunity we shall never have in eternity, an opportunity to call upon God in the midst of trial, disappointment and heartbreak. This life we know in the flesh affords us an opportunity to experience something new and fresh with God that we can only know and experience during our sojourn in this physical realm.
As I approach the latter years of this life I reflect upon the teachings of many great teachers, yet there are teachers out there that I have never been tutored under. So I go to the woods, to the mountains of the Catskills to sit under the teachings of the beast of the fields, the fowls of the air, and earth itself. I will go to them and cry out to them, “Tell me of the beauty and majesty of your Creator, show me your secrets that no man has been able to share, teach me as no man or woman has taught. I open my heart to you, I will allow the ears of my heart to hear what my physical ears cannot hear, I will allow the eyes of my heart to see what my physical eyes cannot see and I shall let the lips of my heart speak a praise to our Creator that my physical lips cannot speak. I go to you, the greatest teachers of all, the mountains, the hills, the valleys, the streams, the living creatures that roam this earth, the fowls of the air and I ask that you impart to me that knowledge of your Creator. I go to you to learn what you have to teach and not when I come to die to discover I have not learned to live.
God’s creation is speaking all around us, do you not hear its cry. David heard it in Psalms 98:8, “Let the rivers clap their hands, Let the mountains sing for joy together.” NIV. I will wake up to the song of the Catskills mountains as they sing their praise to God. I will visit the streams that run through the Catskills and listen to them clap their hands in praise to our Creator.
Before I leave this world I want to sit under the greatest teachers of all, the beast of the fields, the fowls of the air and the earth itself. Their tuition is free, their degree is accredited by God Himself. It is a teaching we can only receive while we live in this world for it is teaching we must experience while we are yet in the flesh.
I ask that you join me in my journey to the heart of God here in the Catskill mountains of New York. Perhaps we will be like Washington Irving’s character who was awakened from a twenty year sleep in the Catskills to discover his whole life, his whole world had changed. For the next few days I will share with you the words from my journal that I kept while I wandered through the Catskills. I hesitate to share much that is in my journey for it was written when my heart was joined with the heart of God and the joy and tears sometimes seem too personal to share, yet if I do not share these joys and tears with you now, I know one day I shall for you will most likely wander to that park in heaven where there will be a crowd of angels listening as I relate the teachings as they were taught to me by the masters, the mountains, the hills, the valleys, the fowls of the air, the beast of the field to this humble work of God while he was in the flesh.
Come and let me share with you the teachers from the prophetic conference in the Catskills with the greatest teachers of all time, God’s creation.
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