’Seeing Christ in nature’ by Owen Lynch - 22 January 2023

Have you ever had an encounter with Christ Jesus in nature? Owen Lynch looks at how prominently nature featured in the Psalms and was woven into Jesus’ teaching as well as Old Testament stories. Do we tend to separate spiritual and physical things, or can we learn from looking for God’s nature in the world and universe around us? This talk concludes with a visual meditation on Psalm 104, and there’s a guide for how to take this further at the end.

Taking this further - become absorbed in Creation

• Take a walk or just sit and look. Notice the various aspects of creation – the sky, the sun, the clouds, trees, plants, flowers, grass, sand, rocks – whatever is there.

• Let yourself be attracted to one reality of creation, maybe a tree, or the sky or the wind, or a rock or a plant.

• Spend time noticing various little things about it. Touch it or listen to it, if you can. (e.g. you attention might be drawn to a tree: notice the leaves, the branches, the bark. Feel the leaves and the bark. Listen to the leaves rustling in the breeze.)

• Reflect on St. Ignatius’ words: “Reflect how God dwells in creatures: in elements giving them existence, in the plants giving them life, in the animals conferring about them sensation, in human beings bestowing understanding.”

• Ask God to reveal God’s presence to you in and through the reality of creation you are contemplating:

1. What does God reveal to you about God?

2. About God’s love?

3. About creation?

4. About you?

• Thank God for whatever is revealed or whatever happens for you during this time.

• Journal – jot a few notes about what occurred during your prayer time.

Find more Bible meditations here, and more on the Psalms here.

More in this series