Guest Post | Mary Beth @ Being at Home by Nature

Ladies and Gentleman I am very happy to share with you this beautiful guest post by Mary @ Being at Home by Nature! She did a fantastic job on putting together this post and writing down words from her heart! I completely agree with her stand on God & Nature being intertwined. I do hope you will take a few minutes to read though this fantastic post & then visit her at her beautiful blog!

 

Hi, my name is Mary Beth and I'm so honored to have been invited to share a post with all of Helen's lovely readers here on Blue Eyed Beauty Blog! I'm stopping over from my own blog, Being at Home by Nature, where I share my passion for the natural world with women and their families. I am to offer the average woman easy and thrifty ways to bring the natural world into their homes and help sustain it for the future. I offer fun information about wildlife, hands-on kid's activities, real food recipes, eco-friendly home projects, fun crafts, healthy product reviews and so much more! Thanks again for this awesome opportunity to share a few of my thoughts with you today!

Divinity In The Natural World

When I was a small child, I remember sitting on the family pew in the little church that I grew up in. There I learned many lessons of life. I learned of love and of responsibility. I learned of forgiveness and of acceptance. I learned of the ever present link between the spiritual and the physical. So much of what I became as an adult came from lessons learned on those hard pews.

When I became an adult, I started to spread my wings. I wanted to make my passions grow and to expand my knowledge. I have always loved nature and all of its wild things. I applied to, and was accepted into, one of the country's best collegiate programs for wildlife biology. During my university career, I did learn a great many things. I studied the patterns of nature. The "whys" and "hows" of the ecological world were drilled into my head. When I graduated I felt as though I really had a firm understanding of how the world works. However, there was one lesson that I never really could fully grasp. Throughout my education, and later in my professional career, I found that for many people the spiritual and natural worlds could not coexist.

I don't want to put the entire blame on the scientific world, either. I have had many friends in my life who believed that to put any thought into conservation, or otherwise caring for the natural world, was to deny the natural position of many as given to us by God. I do believe that the world's resources are a gift for us to use, but I also feel deeply these same resources were entrusted into our care.

I will never understand why for so many people these two magnificent realities must always be divided. For me, I can't help but see so many reasons why they are intertwined!

God made men and women very curious creatures by nature. We have so many questions and nature holds answers to many of them. We find examples in the natural world that we mimic in some of our most amazing feats of engineering. Think of an airplane's wing being modeled after the wing of a bird. In fact, engineers even have their own term used to describe this copycat behavior: biomimicry. In addition, much of our medical knowledge comes the observation of natural processes; and much of our technology is dependent on energy, which you gussed it, comes from our study and understanding of the natural world. God even tells us to seek knowledge from Earth.


Original image: ©
Timberlakephoto | Stock Free Images
& Dreamstime Stock Photos

I also see evidence of God in the order and symmetry of nature. Due to the preciseness of this order and purposefulness of its function it is extremely difficult for me to believe that it is all happenstance. When we as human beings choose to create something, we typically do so with order. Think about how well a house would stand if we didn't make careful measurements during its construction. To me, solving problems in an orderly fashion is unmistakable evidence for intelligent design. Which is why when I look at nature and see its patterns I can't help but also see the intelligent fashioning of our Creator behind them.



Original images: © Rdodson, Donnarae, Ptoone | Stock
Free Images & Dreamstime StockPhotos

I also see God in the function of nature, how each process leads into the next. How the seasons flow from one into the other. How birth leads to death. How the predator seeks the prey; and how the prey in turn seeks out the fruits of soil made fertile from the bones and flesh left from the meal of the predator. Nature works like a machine. Each action has a reaction. How can you have a machine without having a mechanic?

At the end of the day, I really do believe that the lessons about the world that I learned in the little church of my childhood and the scientific knowledge I gained from my university training are simply two translations of the same story. How can you look to nature and not see God? And how can you look to God and not see the beauty and mathematical precision He has given to the natural world? To me, they are, and always will be, inseparable.