The ministry of life

Speaking very broadly here, but I am seeing God's handiwork in nature (both the wild and domesticated aspects) more and more. No surprise there, but the very realization of His love for us in our relationships with animals, with the natural world itself, has been much on my mind of late.

I've been reading a very enlightening book, The Spirituality of Pets, by James Taylor (not the singer, nor the carnival sideshow expert). It's full of beautiful photos of pets and such, but the text really gives a full sense of the ways animals minister to us, no matter how we conceive of the divine. I believe it is so, in much the way that Paul described nature's testimony to the reality of the living God:

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.
—Rom. 1:20

And I always love this display of God's hand in nature that Elijah beheld:

And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire.
—1 Kings 19:11b-12a

Another writer I've been introduced to, Br. Richard Rohr (a Franciscan monk, I believe), writes gracefully about the relationships between humans, animals, and all of nature. If I may borrow his meditation for today:

Question of the Day:
How is everything linked to God?

I would like to reclaim an ancient, evolving and very Franciscan metaphor to rightly name the nature of the universe, God, and the self and to direct our future thinking: the image of the Great Chain of Being. The essential and unbreakable links in the chain include

the Divine Creator,
the angelic heavenly,
the human,
the animal,
the world of plants and vegetation,
the waters upon the earth,
the planet Earth itself with its resources and minerals.

In themselves, and in their union together, they proclaim the glory of God (Psalm 104) and the inherent dignity of all things. This image became the basis for calling anything and everything sacred.

Nature is indeed a battle of tooth and claw, of predator and prey. But it is also a mirror upon the grace of God. On this rainy Sunday morning, I raise up praise from my heart to the Creator of all life.