The Healing Power of Nature

Yesterday, on Shabbat, Sandi I went for a walk in our local nature park. We just sat together listening to the sounds of nature, watching the birds, and watching the varying sunlight patterns highlight the trees in different ways. Through this, Sandi and I connected with each other, with the creation and with the Creator.

The healing and restorative value of these quiet times in nature can’t be overstated. Like taking an energizing vitamin B 12 shot, our need for spending time in nature increases as the world around us gets more frantic and crazy!

Here’s a video I did a couple of years ago on the healing power of nature. May it bless you!

 

6 thoughts on “The Healing Power of Nature

  1. Very Timely Natan

    my husband and I walked too. I used to think it may not be OK for Sabbath but yesterday for the first time we did and it was refreshing and good for our spirits and gave us more to thank Him for.

    We have been through a very rough patch in our life In Christ trying to learn how to be evenly yoked in obedient servant love and this seemed a perfect expression of sharing amongst us all as it is not a walk sans God, but with Him.

    We don’t quite have the splendor of your photo though but have very beautiful memories to treasure.

    Shavua Tov
    FJ

    • Years ago when we were first married, Sandi and I lived in an apartment next to a couple who had a small son. The father would always carry a small camera attached to his belt every where he went. One day I asked him why? I thought it was strange. That was in the days of large film cameras. He told me he didn’t want to miss any opportunity to take photos of his toddler boy as he was growing up. The man was quite a bit older than his wife, and I think this was his second marriage and second family. His first family was already raised and gone. I suspect that he had regrets about how he raised his first family and didn’t want to miss any opportunities to be can exceptional father the second time around.

      Now many of us carry a smart camera phone everywhere we go. This allows us to capture many spur of the moment and unplanned photos ops that pop up unexpectedly. I’m so grateful for this! Can’t tell you how many glorious sunsets, etc., etc., I’ve been able to capture along the road of life and to save enjoy later on. Many of the best photos are now part of slide show that serves as a screen saver on this laptop I’m now typing on. Sandi snapped that photo of my sitting meditatively gazing at the trees on here iPhone. My old neighbor was ahead of his time and now he’s not as crazy as I erroneously thought 27 years ago!

      As far as walking on the Sabbath, there’s nothing wrong with that as long as were not working hard at it and getting tired out in the process, or are not focusing on him. Doing this would violate the Sabbath principle of resting and abiding in his presence. No climbing mountains or backpacking or running a marathon or other activities that take our focus off him or refreshing our inner man!

      The Gospels refer to “a Sabbath days journey.” In those days, of course, they had to walk everywhere including to Shabbat services in the local synagogue. “A Sabbath days journey”, as a recall was around a mile plus or minus.

      To my way of thinking, anything that brings us closer to Elohim and to the loved ones around us is fair game as a Sabbath activity as long as it doesn’t involve strenuous work and it truly glorifies him and points to him in some way.

  2. Thankyou for sharing Natan

    I agree with you. I was like you about the photos too, even today…. I see there is a point where it is not about connecting and remembering but almost an idolatry of self & trying to make meaning in the staging of the pictures that isn’t actually there and how good we get at recording the moment but not actually being in it. All done in hope of connecting more assuredly. All part of trying to ‘be’.

    Just like anything else there is the true and there is the counterfeit. There is the hope of what we would like it to be and there is the present difficulty & we don’t always want to capture those moments completely honestly.

    I work as a house cleaner for some quite wealthy folk and it astonishes me how many photos that have been blown up larger than life, abound. I hear the struggles and the hoped for “picture” to be 3 dimensional, but for now the ears are satisfied not to hear Christ though some are ‘christian’ in attitudes but not dwelling in Christ Words.

    I look at my own pictures…very few because of the life I led before becoming obedient to Christ as well and still a bit wobbly trying to connect in loving truth as well… but trying.

    We are all broken in places and need a healer. I try to imagine that picture when our heart’s desires are pure and love is genuine all the way through us. No agendas, no fears just goodness flowing from our Father.
    Like I perceive your photos.

    Have a blessed week and be strengthened for all your trials within it.
    Love in Christ our most wondrous Jewish Messiah.
    FJ

    • I think that what you’re saying is that a lot of the photos that people take and showcase is about people living in a virtual or an altered reality of what they either wish things to be, or at least are trying to con other people into believing them to be about us. This is why so much of social media is so disingenuous and deceptive and even dangerous. Much of it is show and pretense, and as you point out—idolatry/self-worship. If, not the other hand, it can be used to point people to Yeshua and helps us to find the deeper meaning in life and to connect us to Elohim and to others around us at a deeper level, this is good. Ultimately, it seems to me that everything we do needs to be about shema——loving Elohim and our neighbor with our whole being by walking out His commands, otherwise what we do is merely vanities of vanities——empty nothingness going nowhere producing no lasting fruit, which engenders emptiness, meaninglessness and leanness of soul and ultimately darkness and death. Does this make sense to anyone?

      O thank you YHVH Elohim for the meaning and purpose you bring to our lives! Without you and your truth to guide us in the darkness as we swim in the seas of humanity, we’d all be hopelessly lost, without Elohim and without hope like all those around us who are outside of the spiritual commonwealth of the redeemed Israel of Elohim!

      • Amen Natan! Meaning. Ultimate meaning us where our El is at. All His truth ever does is share meaning with us. We can have it either way as you said. Blessings to all. Shalom. FJ

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