The Splendor of God Revealed through Creation
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Beth Henricks
August 2, 2026
Psalm 42:1-3
As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God? My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, Where is your God?
Good morning, friends. It is wonderful to be with you today for our Sunday Funday. I’d like to welcome Bob and Sue back from their 3-month sabbatical. We look forward to hearing about their experiences over the next few weeks and months and how this sabbatical has impacted them.
I love this day for so many reasons. What a joy to watch our young people have such fun on the water slide and play other games on our lovely property. I always look forward to enjoying our annual picnic, tasting the special treats many of you prepare to share. And our worship on this Sunday outside takes on an added element of reverence and awe as we experience the splendor of God revealed through nature.
God does reveal God’s self in many ways to us. This is the way we know God is real and not just some consciousness of the mind. God is certainly revealed through the life and teachings of Jesus and through the truths shared in the Bible. God is also revealed through our children and our relationships one with another. But for me, the dazzling purity and sense of brilliance is most revealed through nature and all creation around us.
The pastor and writer David Owen wrote, “One way to love God whom we have not seen is to love God’s creation which we have seen. In part, to love creation is simply to enjoy it, but for me , loving creation as God’s creation includes wonder and awe and reverence in the face of that creation.”
I appreciate the story in Exodus 33:18-22 where Moses wants to make sure that he is following God’s will and asks God to show himself. Moses said, ‘Show me your glory, I pray.’ 19And God said, ‘I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, “The LORD”; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. 20But’, he said, ‘you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.’ 21And the LORD continued, ‘See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; 22and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; 23then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.’
God wants to respond to Moses request but knows that no one can visibly see God that is beyond being. What an intimate gesture that God puts Moses in a cleft of the rock where he will be safe and can experience the presence of God through his surroundings (because I don’t think God has a back but it makes a great story).
God is continuously revealed to us if we only have eyes to see and ears to hear.
I like what the writer and pastor Eugene Peterson writes in Lights A Lovely Mile,
“Speaking to our sense of and our speculation about the absence of God is the single word manifested. From the same Greek root, we get our word phenomenon. When a manifestation takes place, when a phenomenon occurs, it means that there has been a showing, a revealing, a display. In other words, God has shown us something of himself. He is not absent; he is here, and we can see the evidence, the phenomenon.”
“”God, you see, was no hidden manager of the universe, no enigmatic universal force, no mysterious secret occult. He was a God known among his people. God’s splendor was that he showed himself.”
The revelation of God is constant. Every dawn, every dusk, every rainfall, every tree, flower and brush, every animal, every baby that becomes human from a cell and a sperm etc. It is all amazing, incredible and a miracle if we take the time to observe.
Mary Oliver is one of my favorite poets and she often finds and describes God in creation. In her book, Upstream, Selected Essays she writes “Do you think there is anything not attached by its unbreakable cord to everything else? Plant your peas and your corn in the field when the moon is full, or risk failure. This has been understood since planting began. The attention of the seed to the draw of the moon is, I suppose, measurable, like the tilt of the planet. Or, maybe not – maybe you have to add some immeasurable ingredient made of the hour, the singular field, the hand of the sower.”
We have been talking this summer about community, connection and interdependence here at First Friends. These values extend beyond our own community and into nature, creation, our country and the world. We go to the center to find the source of our connection. Everything is interconnected and cannot survive without all the webs of connection within and without. While God is revealed in creation, we humans have an important role to play to continue the evolution of life from birth, death and rebirth. This cycle plays out into eternity and we have a responsibility to be good stewards, good sowers, good hands and feet in the revelation of God. May we practice this awareness with each breath we take, each bird we see, each child we watch play, each piece of food that enters our mouths today and with the fellowship we experience on this glorious Sunday Funday.
As we enter our time of waiting worship, I offer a few queries for your consideration:
In what ways does God reveal God to you?
What is my part of creation?
What can I do today to reveal God to others?