112: Nature, Part 2

This is the second of a multi-part series where Denver addresses how many of the things found in nature point to Christ. Transcript Every one of us, if I say the word perfection, every one of us have something that comes to mind. In the course of your life, my guess is that every one of you have had moments that you could point to and say, that moment was absolutely perfect. There’s nothing about it that I would have changed. When you ride a motorcycle; roads have a design that is, for safety reasons, capable of handling traffic at speeds that are called the design speed, which means that a vehicle can operate up to that design speed, on that road, safely. But the speed limit is never the design speed. Because they build in this margin of safety, so they tell you to drive five or ten or 15 miles below the design speed of the road so that there’s a margin of safety built into it. If you’re riding a motorcycle on a road, particularly a rural, winding road, like Idaho five that goes from the Montana border to the Washington border, and you go the posted speed limit, the motorcycle does not cooperate with you. It doesn’t like that speed. It’s hard to handle. But if you speed up, where the motorcycle and the road and you are in syncopation with one another and you’re riding at the design speed, everything is easier. In fact, it is almost thoughtless as you go. The rhythm of the road, the design of the road, the pace the motorcycle is at, everything about that. On Idaho five, there are places where the banking - they call it “super elevation” - of the road is 25 or 30 miles an hour above the posted speed limit. We were returning from the Black Hills of South Dakota, coming through Northern Idaho on Idaho five, going the design speed. It was a moment of absolute perfection, when the joy of the experience, the feel of the humidity, the pace of the road, everything about that moment was perfect until it was interrupted by an Idaho State patrolman, who fortunately was pointed in the opposite direction as we went by at the design speed of the road. Well, he had a lot of recovery to do to reorient himself, and to start from zero, to get to where we were. And we happened into, fortunately, a little village and went a block off the road, found a gas station, hopped off and there was a fellow there who owned, he owned a Moto Guzzi, which in northern Idaho is a pretty rare a motorcycle to be driving. It’s a V-twin, but unlike a Harley Davidson, which is an inline V-twin with a front and a back, this one has V’s that go out either side. It’s still a V. It’s not like a BMW, that’s a Boxster, horizontally opposed. And so we acted like we’d been there all week. And the police came through, making their noise and they went on their happily way. And he said, “They looking for you?” We said, “That’s possible, but...” There are moments where, because you can’t be planning next week or regretting last month, you can’t be doing anything other than that moment. If you're on the bike and your mind is elsewhere and you’re going the design speed and your mind is elsewhere, you can kill yourself or you can badly injure yourself. You can do extraordinarily stupid, haphazard, dangerous things if you’re not absolutely in the moment. Perfection is one of those things which occurs absolutely in the moment. Think back over your lifetime at those moments when you would not change a thing. You were so content, there was nothing else that you would want or change about that moment. There’s a character, a samurai, that an American struggled to try and understand in the movie, “The Last Samurai”. And although they grew to have this friendship with one another, Kamatsu always, Katsumoto, was always looking for the perfect cherry blossom. He would study the cherry tree as it blossomed in the Spring at his, outside his own temple, always looking for the perfect cherry blossom and never finding...there was always a problem with it. Well, as he lay dying on the battlefield, at the end of his life, one of his last breaths, he’s looking up and seeing in the distance the cherry trees blooming, and he observes, “Perfect, they are all perfect.” And it didn’t matter what flaws they had. The fact is they were all perfect. I can remember sometime . . . the scene presents itself vividly in my mind. I can’t tell you how old I was or what grade I was in, but during recess, playing marbles with friends - and recess was maybe 15 minutes - but it was timeless. Out, playing marbles with a friend, in the dirt with your marble, all eternity could come and go in that moment of such profound contentment. I have dogs. And dogs are always content and we’re told that dogs do not have any sense of time. They may live only 10 to 12 years, but as far they’re concerned they’ve lived for all eternity, because there’s a timelessness to the experience of being a dog. They’re not in a hurry to get somewhere, unless of course you’ve got the leash and you’re going to take them out, in which event they’ll anticipate that moment, but there’s a timelessness to the idea of perfection. I can recall an afternoon, I had come out of my house and I was sitting on the front porch. And I was all alone. The temperature that day must have been exactly the same temperature as the temperature of my skin so that I could not tell where outside of me and inside of me began and ended by feeling the breeze. The temperature was exactly the same temperature as I felt. And it was so calm an afternoon...so calm a moment sitting there that I was taken in by the moment itself. A bird flew by and I could feel, I could feel the movement of the bird’s wings through the vibration of the air because it was just that calm. I thought, as I sat there, this is Heaven. This, this moment, this experience, this isHeaven because it, at that moment, was perfect, something that I would not change. I was out walking and I came upon this songbird that was just singing the happiest little tune you could ever imagine. I don’t know what kind of bird it was, but it was sparrow-size and small and very happy and singing its tune and doing all that God endowed it to do. And I came upon it abruptly and, because of where it had situated itself and because of where I came upon it from, it was trapped. And it was singing loudly. And when I got there, it was so loud and so startling that I stopped and looked at it and it immediately stopped singing. And it knew, it was like the bird realized, if I wanted to I could capture it, if I wanted to I could kill it, if I wanted to I could exercise whatever control I wanted over the bird. And it looked frightened, less than an arm’s length away. Foolish to let a human get that close to you, in that vulnerable a spot. And the stopping of the singing was so abrupt. It’s like the last notes still hung in the air as this frightened little creature looked at me. And I thought, “Hey, I’m harmless,” but it doesn’t know that. So I thought, ‘What’s the best way to communicate to this trapped little animal that I’m harmless?” I turned and I walked away and I tried to whistle a little like what the bird had been whistling like. Miserable imitation. I mean, it was probably screeching to that poor thing, but I whistled as I’m walking away. And within a few steps, if there’s anyway to describe it, I would say that the bird’s tune resumed on a happier note than it had been before. That was a moment that was perfect. I’m sure every one of you have had moments in your life that you can point to and recall and say, that moment, that incident, that was perfect. If we can conceive of perfection, or if we can experience it even for just a moment, that means perfection exists. It’s real. It’s attainable. It can be had, even in this place, and even with you, and even with me, perfection is possible. In this creation, there are two opposing forces that cause everything there is to be and to exist. Those two opposing forces are not good and evil, although we tend to call them “good” and call them “evil”. The two opposing forces are, in fact, love and fear. Everything that is generative or creative comes about as a consequence of love. If you think about all the problems that people have with one another and what would solve them, the one thing that could solve every problem is love, if we loved one another enough. And all of those vices, all of the suffering, the anger, the pride, the envy, the impatience, the greed have their root in fear: “I fear I will not have enough and therefore I envy. I fear for my own inability, and therefore I resent your ability.” Everything that produces negativity comes about as a consequence of fear. When it comes to signs, faith does not get produced by signs. You can’t do that. That is why Pharaoh never got impressed. Signs are inconsequential. Whatever the sign is – it was like brother Pratt was explaining. So what, bad weather happens all the time. The plagues are still going on in Egypt. The remarkable nature of the sign is that it happened on cue, not that the sign happened. I’m having a conversation with a fellow. It involves a true gospel principle. We’re standing in the back parking lot of my office while we are finishing the conversation. I say, “Do you see the dove sitting atop the pole in the distance?” And when he saw the dove it took off. It flew clockwise one circle around us and it landed back on the pole. To him it was a sign. To me it was a sign. If it was a crow and it went counterclockwise I would say, “Hey, there’s something wrong with you. The Lord told me I’d be okay but I’m pretty sure...” Signs are not controlled by men but are God’s to give as God determines. Signs are not supposed to be the subject of boasting. Some of the most remarkable signs that have been given to me are silently recorded in my journal but are astonishing. Signs exist. Many of the signs recorded in the lives of believers may be unknown to you,...