Mosquitos, humidity, heat, rain – all are a part of tropical Vietnam, but the moisture always renews a verdant, beautiful land. One season, dry, though briefer, is refreshed by the next, wet and longer. I was surprised when first flying in to Vietnam to a war that I saw so little signs of on the land. There was green everywhere, carpets of rice patties, tree-covered mountains, triple canopy jungle, and luxurious, sandy beaches unsullied then by man-made structures.
The dry season maintained the scars of war in the landscape; the wet season abundantly healed them. The long, thin country gave copious opportunity for a beautiful coastline dotted with spectacular beaches stretching almost endless miles while providing a border for the South China Sea.
What a beautiful, verdant land. Under God’s design, it self-recovers from ugly scars of war in a mere season. The dry season shows all the marks of weapons upon the land, whether metal track prints from tanks and armored personnel carriers, bomb and mortar craters, bullet splintered tree trunks, or the burn scars of battle fires.
Vietnam is unmistakably beautiful, and war cannot overcome God’s design to refresh and renew. Such also is the impact of His grace; His mercies are new every morning, not just on the earth, but in the sons of men who call out to Him for renewing grace. Just as the earth is restored, so are the souls of the weary when they turn by that grace to God.
We live in a fallen world of men and women weighed down by sin, a world at war whether or not a battle of nations is raging. There are real, spiritual principalities and powers of darkness waging war on the earth around the clock, never letting up for any respite which God Himself does not induce.
God’s design of how His creation works presents a powerful example of what He does for His image-bearers in the world, weary souls in their battle with sin and Satan, aching for spiritual refreshment and rest for tired bodies. He does this on earth in the form of sporadic oases, and beyond the grave, for those who are His, in an eternal condition of pain-free, tearless life.
As elsewhere in the world, the land of Vietnam is always renewing itself under the hand of Providence. In a similar manner, springs of grace and mercy rain down upon the souls of men; but with man, only as they call to Him through His appointed One, His divine Son. The creation sustains itself through God’s appointed natural laws; His salvation of man comes also through an appointed means, making use by faith of the sacrifice of His Son to atone for your sin. Men and women on both sides of the war of nations are transformed into true brothers and sisters. The creation blossoms in radiant colors, while they become new and clean through His blood.
The observation of this remarkable creation highlights the amazing transformation of men’s souls. It is dramatic to witness the change in a person who comes to faith in Jesus Christ. Battle scars are thoroughly healed, attitudes are transformed, and people are made new.
“God, all nature sings Thy glory, and Thy works proclaim Thy might; ordered vastness in the heavens, ordered course of day and night; beauty in the changing seasons, beauty in the storming sea; all the changing moods of nature praise the changeless Trinity.
But our sins have spoiled Thine image; nature, conscience only serve as unceasing, grim reminders of the wrath which we deserve. Yet Thy grace and saving mercy in Thy Word of truth revealed claim the praise of all who know Thee, in the blood of Jesus sealed.
(1st and 3rd verses of David Clowney’s hymn, “God, All Nature Sings Thy Glory, 1960)
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