Looking For God?

“O That I Might Find Him”

I can remember very vividly how in my recent seminary days, I was able to strengthen my spiritual life through communing with nature.  The seminary campus is a beautiful site, particularly in the spring.  And it was this time of year that I made it a practice to go out to the edge of the campus every afternoon for at least an hour to commune with nature.  On the side of the campus ran a tributary from the Delaware river,  Everyday I would sit on the edge of the campus by the side of the river and watch the beauties of nature.  My friend, in this experience, I saw God.  I saw him in the birds of the air, the leaves of the tree, the movement of the rippling waves. . . . Sometimes I go out at night and look up at the stars as they bedeck the heavens like shining silver pins sticking in a magnificent blue pin cushion.  There is God.  Sometimes I watch the sun as it gets up in the morning and paints its technicolor across the eastern horizon.  There is God.  Sometimes I watch the moon as it walks across the sky as a queen walks her masterly mansion.  There is God.  Henry Ward Beecher said it right:  “Nature is God’s tongue.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.  “Reminiscence about Crozer years, ca. 1953,” 

The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., edited by Clayborne Carson.