One unchanging thing about me is that I am a lover of God’s natural world. One of my favorite songs is, “This is My Father’s World.” The beauty and sounds around us declare God’s love to us. He created the earth as a gift to His children. Too often we take the beauty and sounds around us for granted. Psalm 19:1 states, “The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (NIV).

The older I get the more I wonder, “What is God saying through nature?” I used to think it was a crazy idea that God spoke from the heavens because Disney videos portrayed the sounds from heaven as gods or imaginary characters playing 10-Pin in heaven, and I knew that wasn’t true.

God started telling us the heavens and stars were important in Genesis 1:1 when “In the beginning God created the heavens and earth.” Later in verses 3-5 God says, “Let there be light” that separated the light from the darkness and created the first day. This was not the ending of God’s creation of lights. In verses 14-19 on the fourth day God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years…And God made two great lights – the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.”

Now let’s return to Psalm 19. Verses 2-4 tell us what is occurring all around us, but because of our human nature we are so woefully unaware.

V. 2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.

V. 3 They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them.

V. 4 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.

I ask the question again, “What is God saying all around us that we cannot currently understand?” I find myself listening to the wind blowing through the trees, listening more intently to the rumbles of thunder in the distance, and viewing the clouds, the leaves, and the change of weather with a spoken statement to the heavens, “God, what are you saying?”

In the Bible there are several references of God speaking and those in hearing thought it was thunder or didn’t understand what they experienced.

Matthew 3:13-17: At Jesus’ baptism “as soon as he was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and Jesus saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’”

John 12:27-29: Jesus was telling of his coming death and resurrection to his disciples. Jesus said, “‘Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name.’ Then a voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.’ The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered, others said an angel had spoken to him.”

Matthew 27:32-56: Jesus’ crucifixion records the following nature reactions to his death. “From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land. About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eli, Eli lema sabachthani?’ (which means ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’)…And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life.”

Acts 9:1-7: Saul, a murderer of Christians had a conversion to Paul, becoming the anchor of God’s New Testament. Saul had a life-changing heaven encounter from God. “As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ ‘Who are you, Lord?’ Saul said. ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.’ he replied. The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anything.”

What is God saying to us through His nature that surrounds us today? Realize that it is possible that no one else may hear or see what God is telling you. Maybe God’s words to us may be through the reading of the Bible or an encounter with a person giving us encouragement. However, in each of the Biblical examples above, the people who encountered God’s breakthrough from Heaven to Earth were forever changed, and their change impacted the people and world around them. I encourage all of us to ask God, “What are you saying?”