If we look at Nature around us, the Holy Spirit leads faithful believers to look at it in a spiritual way. Yes, trees, flowers, many kinds of living things are beautiful and pleasing to the senses. Yet to be pleasing to the spirit, we must look deeper. The Holy Spirit challenges us to look below the surface, beyond the visible aspects of natural things, towards the power underpinning, driving, sustaining Nature. Here we find encouraging sayings of Jesus and the sources he was familiar with, though little preached about, which tell the accounts of how Nature came to be underpinned by powers of spiritual kinds, such as his own name as Lord and Christ, and his powerful word. Jesus withstood the tests of being weak and humanly fallible. Evil tried to exploit his weaknesses. Why? Because evil had itself failed, though mightier than the human world. This failing had threatened Nature, put it in jeopardy, put its very fabric and processes at risk. Angels were susceptible to temptation. God was never susceptible, but His servants were, and many had failed. This had brought evil into Nature. Humans had followed suit so readily too. But how about this Son of God, there living as a human being, vulnerable to failure more than angels were, as much as all humans were? The leader of evil saw this challenge and took it, trying to trip up this Son of God. Jesus did not fail. His closeness to God, his knowledge of scripture, his understanding of it from God’s perspective, this all kept him steady. God was well pleased, and now there was hope. Nature had a basis for truly sustainable governance, even sustaining angels who sought to withstand evil and not give in. Jesus gained a name beyond any name under God. That name deters angels from falling and keeps Nature at a spiritual level on the pathways God had set for it all. Jesus Christ, the Lord, has a name with power to be the plumb-line by which Nature stays true to God’s commands and ordinances. Angels can use this name to maintain their allocated domains. And we too can benefit, not only indirectly by the sustaining of natural order, and a high degree of angelic faithfulness, but in our own souls, that now have this name as hope of salvation and freedom from our own weak human tendencies to sin. He is the light come into a dark world, sent by the Father. He is truly the Son. This is all part of seeing Nature in the way of spirit, led by the Holy Spirit.
