An then one of the most obvious reasons to quickly fall in love with this city: Marseille is surrounded by natural beauty. The Mediterranean Sea, gorges and beaches, national parks, mountains... to me it’s a near-perfect combination. I get the living organic wilderness of the city and the (quiet) living organic wildness of nature within steps of each other.
I often wonder what God intended for the Earth. How would He have us to live here? The tree-hugger argument is a pretty easy one. Nature as created is perfect, don’t screw it up, live in harmony with it. I get that, and I can see through nomadic people groups past and present a definite upward focus: an almost required spirituality due to their way of life. I’m not saying these groups got it right, but when you rely on the land for life, you can’t help but worship a creator God. He gives life and He takes it away. He is ever-present and ever-evident. This sounds like a good thing. John the Baptist obviously thought so, he “was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist, and his diet was locusts and wild honey” (Mark 1:6) while living in the wilderness.
Yet I still wonder. Is that what God wanted for us, humans, His chosen race of creatures? Is that all He intended?
Isaiah 45:18 points out that God the Creator “is the God who formed the earth and made it, He established it and did not create it a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited.”
He created this world “to be inhabited,” but I still don’t know what that means.
He did command Israel to build the temple, and He even instructed the raising of OT cities, right? And Jesus spent plenty of time in the city...
What does He think of our cities today?
I’ve always loved nature as it was created.
Get out there, as far as you can go, and spend more than a few hours. It’s impossible not to fall in love.
But I’m starting to fall in love with cities too. It’s a love I’ve only recently discovered, and I don’t think I’ll ever shake it. There’s something alive, organic (dare I say... natural?) and redeeming about them.
2 comments:
We can't wait to visit you all in Marseille! It looks beautiful!
Thanks Rachel! You and that super-cool kid of yours are welcome anytime. And you can bring your husband too, I guess.
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