Everything Touches Everything…

About a century ago, John Muir in looking at the great expanse of Nature, wrote a book called My First Summer in the Sierra, in which he said: “No Sierra landscape that I have seen holds anything truly dead or dull, or any trace of what . . . is called rubbish or waste; everything is perfectly clean and pure and full of divine lessons . . . The hand of God becomes visible; then it seems reasonable that what interest Him may well interest us. When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”¹

This sentence deserves second consideration: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”

“There is awesome evidence of the oneness of the universe, of an infinite Intelligence and Administrator, of God and His eternal plan and purpose. In a sense, nothing is insignificant. No person, no pattern is unimportant; no act, no word, no thought fails to be recorded, no prayer unheard; no need unnoticed. When we pluck up any flower, its roots are attached to all the earth.”

All the glory and beauty of the spring, the growth of a seed; the harvest; the miracle of birth, the body’s ability to heal and renew itself- all this and invinitely more adds assurance of divine plan and purpose.

All this gives faith and hope and peace, and overshadows wars and wickedness, sorrow and dissension, selfishness and deceit. And the meaning of it all is that we may become more like Him, who made us in His own image, with possibilities that are limitless and everlasting as we search for truth, with courage to accept it when we find it. God, our Father, seeks only our salvation. And may He help us to find our oneness with Him, and with one another, with the peace that comes with repentance, and the assurance that comes with being part of His great purpose. “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”