One of my favorite poems by John Keats is entitled, To One Who Has Been Long in City Pent. It begins in this way:
To one who has been long in city pent,
‘Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven,—to breathe a prayer
Full in the smile of the blue firmament.
I grew up in the city. I lived on a busy street and nightly was lulled to sleep by the passing traffic. A flat sheet of dirt with a few clumps of grass comprised our yard. The front door opened to a world filled with concrete, asphalt, noise, and bright, artificial light. This was not an environment conducive to “looking into the fair face of heaven” or seeing the “full smile of the blue firmament.” That is not to say I did not experience God’s creation in such a place. On the contrary, I remember well the day when a goshawk came and sat in our oak tree for an extended period in all the stately glory of a bird of prey. My family was instrumental in making me aware of the creation that was around me, and I think I beheld it as much as was possible in such a location. However, I would not say that I experienced it as fully as could have been; this was simply the limitation of my position.
Recently, I visited a place that I have been going to since childhood: my grandparents’ home, located in a valley in central Pennsylvania on the site of a former apple orchard – the location of woods, fields, and Stoney Creek. Arriving at this familiar place, I was again struck by its rare beauty, the beauty of all that God has made. On one of my first days there I climbed a hill – from whose top I can see down the valley – in order to watch the sun set. I missed the event and was only in time to see the orange sky left by its departure. I saw the bare trees lift their black branches up into a sky the color of fire, which faded perfectly into the deepening blue of the higher heavens. Even without its source of light, the sky was almost too bright to look at and seemed huge, larger than anything, a canvas on which airplanes were tiny specks that faded into the light.
Another evening I stepped outside after dark and looked up into the night sky. I have seen a sky filled with stars many times before, but this struck me. With almost no light around me, I looked up into a vast inky blackness that was deep and very dark – darker, it seemed to me, than other skies I had seen. Set in this dark background the stars shone out brilliantly bright and clear, extending in all directions, as far as my eye could see. The little dipper was outlined clearly and vividly right before my eyes. The clarity and hugeness of the scene made me simultaneously feel delight and a sense of how infinitesimally small I really am.
These are just two examples from my own experience of beholding God’s creation in a place less encumbered than many other places are. Observing the world in this way is vitally important. Not because nature in and of itself has some value that can move the spirits of men, as someone like Keats may have thought, but because of what it teaches us about God.
God created everything out of nothing. The world in which we live could have been any way that he chose, and yet he chose to make it the way it is. God has also chosen to reveal Himself to his creation. He has done this specially in His Son and in the words of the Holy Scriptures, which teach the way unto salvation. However, Romans 1 is clear: he has also revealed himself in creation.
I think we need to take more time to observe and contemplate the wonderful world God has made. Our modern-day, industrial society that is focused on productivity and hurrying from place to place has no time for quiet contemplation or wonder. If you stop to reflect on something, that is time wasted that could have been used for other more productive things.
Cities are the beating heart and restless soul of industrial society. They are places that “never sleep,” where individuals are constantly rushing from one thing to the next, for there is no shortage of things to take up a person’s time.
Are cities inherently bad? I don’t think so. After all, the New Jerusalem will be a city. There are beautiful things in cities, not least of which are the images of God that inhabit them. However, in the New Jerusalem we will forever contemplate God more fully than we can imagine here on earth. In our fallen world, cities often tend to be places where God’s creation is blurred, defaced, and mutilated to fit the “better” purposes humans have for it.
This is a shame because this obscures our perception of God. Ignore what you’ve always been told and look at the sun. Is it dazzlingly bright? Can you not bear to look at it for more than a few moments? Does its light even obscure you from being able to see all that it is? And yet, it is a lovely thing that gives light and life to the whole earth. God dwells in unapproachable light; it is only because of Christ that we can even behold him, and yet he is the creator and sustainer of all things. Or take the night’s sky. It is vast beyond imagining; when you look into it do you feel like a speck of dust? Compared to God the nations are but drop in a bucket, and yet we know that he loves us. We should be in awe of his love.
Keats is right. It is very sweet to look into the face of heaven and see the smile of the blue firmament. It should cause us to pray to the God who made it all and admire his splendor and majesty. We need to take time to leave the centers of industrialism where we often live lives full of busyness and spend more moments quietly observing creation, learning what God teaches us about himself through all that he has made.
