Finding God in Nature

**Guest Post
Today as we enter Holy Week leading up to Easter, we welcome Amelia of Tales of a Mountain Mama to the blog.   I love reading her stories and look up to her as a leader in the field of Family Adventure and Outdoor Play.  Make sure you read her bio at the end.

In the stillness of new snow and in the rustle of the trees in the mountains we do a lot of soul-searching and a lot of praying.  We are inspired by a wilderness so great that it refuses to be tamed.  We pray to a God so great to have provided us such beauty.  We love so great in order to live life to the absolute fullest. 

As a family, we find the peace of God during our adventures. 

We spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to teach our children to have a great love for the outdoors and a great respect for it also.  Then we use those lessons (humble as they may be) to guide them most importantly towards a love for our God.  Not an easy task. 

And yet, often those lessons are taught without much prodding from us.  That is the beauty of the land (and trees, and sky, and mountains…)  They seem to provide constant opportunity for learning and challenging.  Even our three year-old knows there MUST be a Maker.  How else would those birds know how to fly or the trees to bend with the wind?  How do the rocks stay where the belong high in the mountains or the flowers dance with the breezes?

I have a favorite quote from another lover of nature and God.  St. Francis of Assisi is attributed to saying, “Preach the Gospel at all times.  Use words if necessary.”  His words ring true to the fact that our faith can be seen through our actions:  the way we respect the lands we hike through, the way we ask God for strength when challenged and the way we love our family by taking all precautions to remain safe in the wilderness.

The funny thing is that our own children seem to teach us more about our Faith and our God in their joy and wonder in the outdoors than we can hope to maintain at our ripened-by-the-world “old” age. 

Finding God in nature is one of those things you can almost not help but do. 

We are consistently awed by the peace and tranquility we find out there and come back to it again and again.  Our hearts soar in adoration to the Maker of the sunrises and sunsets and we have spent many a hikes singing songs of praise.  The simple gestures in simple moments of just being and drinking in the beauty around us speak wonders to our children, to ourselves.  

How do you find God in nature?  And how do you lead your children to God through nature???

Amelia writes a blog to help inspire families to get outdoors and enjoy God’s creation and each other daily.  She thanks God for her husband and two young sons and their health that let them get out and explore!  You can find her over at Tales of a Mountain Mama.