When was the last time that you scooped up a handful of lake water? Felt the cool, refreshment of one of nature’s most vital gifts?

When was the last time you got your nose into a handful of soil? Enjoyed its earthy aroma! Felt its velvety nature as it slipped through the cracks of your fingers.

When was the last time you stopped still to enjoy the scenery of a forest, prairie, mountainscape? Let the majesty of the enormity of it all whisk your imagination away!

I’ve been blessed this summer to spend some time on a small lake in northern Minnesota, and I have been struck by how creation still has the power to surprise and move me.

For instance, one night while quietly gazing at the last orange rays of the sunset, I saw a beaver slowly swim across the front of the dock, creating a beautiful “V” shaped fan rippling out behind it on glasslike water. Never in all my years of coming to this spot had I seen this happen.

What a joyful surprise!

Another time this summer, there was also a collection of six loons that had gathered not far off the end of the dock, and I’d also never seen six adult loons gather either. What a cacophony of beautiful sound they made!

I also saw a heron fly parallel to the beach right over the dock and land in a tree on the bank just some 15 yards or so from us. Again, I’d never seen a gull land in a tree!

While all of these remarkable first-time experiences have made my soul sing and given me great joy, they also reminded me just how disconnected to creation we all are. Well, not all of us. More specifically, how disconnected our white, Westernized culture is.

It wasn’t always this way, of course. Once upon a time, it was necessary for all of us to interact with creation on a daily basis. In one way or another we were all dependent on the flora, fauna and inanimate natural resources gifted to us by the Creator.

But as we modernized and mechanized and consumerized our society, the necessity to interface with creation has been minimized. Many of us go all week long, moving from climate controlled homes to climate controlled vehicles to climate controlled public spaces and back again. We very rarely need to encounter nature.

Friends, this is our loss, and also contributes to our massive lack of concern about the gift of creation that we are so quickly spoiling.

This week, go outside. Get your snoot in a handful of dirt! Witness the beauty of a bird that’s new to you. Touch the grass; eye up a beautiful flower. Take in the vast array of life besides us.

It’ll do your soul, and faith, some real good. Amen.

Devlyn Brooks is the CEO of Churches United in Moorhead, Minn., and an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America serving Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. He blogs about faith at findingfaithin.com, and can be reached at devlynbrooks@gmail.com.