Books to Celebrate God and the Natural World
If God Were a Great Big Bear is a beautiful book, to celebrate God and his creations, in the form of nature. Ideal for all reader ages, the book revels in the joy of nature, and the One who made it all.
A rhythmic meditation on the nature of God in the world, this book invites you to imagine God creating each element of nature, especially for the benefit of all creatures and plants that He lovingly made:
If God were a mighty whale, she’d make vast, mysterious oceans, wouldn’t she?
If God were a wiggly worm, he’d make fallen leaves and rotting trees and rich earth, wouldn’t he?
God also made several natural scenes for us to appreciate and look after:
- Rushing streams
- Mountains with caves
- Sun to warm flowers
- Red and orange trees
- Seas full of marine friends!
God is in all of Creation, and in you and me. God made a perfectly balanced interconnected world, not just for humans (to drill oil, fish and pollute) but for all animals and plants to thrive in.
Paul Harbridge is an award-winning children’s book author in Toronto, Canada. Surrounded by beautiful lakes and forests. Illustrator Marta Dorado lives in Pamplona (Spain) where she enjoys exploring nature and the coast.
The Beauty of God’s First Sacred Text
The Book of Nature is a book to gift any Christian who does not see looking after the planet as high priority (think far-right evangelical Christians both here and in the US). Or to Christians (or anyone) who loves the planet, and sees it as a gift from God for us to look after.
For thousands of years, the natural world was our sacred text. By the Middle Ages, the text was given a name. But today when nature is damaged from disasters and human actions, we need again to return Nature as a place of refuge and retreat.
In this book, science and the wisdom of poets is weaved with a gentle spiritual practice, a framework of the Divine work of the Creator. God’s first revelation came to us through ongoing creations:
- The rumblings of the heavens
- The seasonal eruptions of earth
- The invisible pull of migration
- The tide and times of the oceans
- Celestial shiftings
Draw back into nature as a sacred encounter. We need look no further than the Divine to find Nature at its best.
I am attuned to the one who paints the dawn in tourmaline streaks and salts the night sky in chalky, sometimes brilliant flecks. The one who thought to quench the thirst of the migrating butterfly with mists of fog.
And remembered that baby birds might do well to memorise star-stitched tracings far, far above the nursery that is the nest.
Barbara Mahany is a writer whose work has been published in the Chicago Tribune for almost 30 years, mostly on nature, faith and family. She lives in Illinois, USA.
Permission to wonder, get curious and find God in the tiny details of a sprouting garden, a forest glade, birds in flight or the moon. Reminds us that there are different ways to encounter God all around us, beyond Scripture.
