JOYOUSNESS OF
NATURE
CAN there be anything joyous about nature in January?
Among the most vivid recollections of my childhood
in northern Illinois is the way the rabbits played on the
snow on a fullmoon-lighted night. A little girl who enjoyed
lying awake at night to listen to the waves talking on
near-by Lake Michigan, or to watch the dance of leaf shadows
cast on her wall by the street light, used also to be
thrilled at what she saw on certain January nights.
It seems to her that she will never again see such
intensely dazzling moonlight until that time when "the light
of the moon shall be as the light of the sun" in the new
earth. (Isaiah 30:26.) The sparkling brilliance of a January
full moon was enhanced, of course, by the snow it shone
upon, and it was accented by the corresponding depth of the
black tracery of tree silhouettes and shadows. Then it
seemed to the watcher at the window that all the rabbits in
the world met on the expanse of black-hedged white that was
last summer's garden.
Talk about ice frolics! No man-planned performances
can equal for spontaneous joy and grace the way those
rabbits played. Such races! Such leapfrog! Such intricate
games of tag! Such pure joy put to motion! When gradually
childhood's absorbed curiosity was overcome by the
penetration of 55 degrees of frost (25 degrees below zero)
into an unheated bedroom and she returned to her blankets,
it would be with an awed wonder if a scene so different from
daytime was real or a dream. However a scrutiny of the snow
the next day showed that the rabbits had been there, and
they had played. Since then she has read of woodsmen's
observations of such playfulness written on the snow. It
intrigues the imagination—not moonlight and roses, but
moonlight and rabbits dancing for joy on the snow!
Since then she has seen the wild rabbits playing in
the daytime. Once, feeling the need of music and solitude to
feed the soul, she spent a long spring Sabbath afternoon in
a little country church house, playing the organ, reading,
praying, meditating, and watching. She watched the rabbits
playing. In the yard, screened from the little-traveled lane
by shrubs, perhaps a dozen rabbits gathered. They seemed
oblivious of the figure at the window or the sound of the
organ. The same joyous games the rabbits of her childhood
had played on the snow these Tennessee rabbits played on the
grass. Their lighthearted delight did as much as her music
to heal her soul disquietude.
Those who are at peace and in harmony with their
Creator are happy—January or June. Nature, even in this age,
demonstrates that. Fun, thy name is a fat puppy. Spontaneous
joy, thine abode is in a flock of lambs. Ecstasy? See a colt
demonstrate it. A Kipling writes of the elephant dance, and
a Rutledge of the antics of deer on a South Carolina beach.
All wild creatures play, except when murderous man injects
fear into the atmosphere.
All Bible references to nature and wild creatures in
the future age, when Jesus has returned and created a new
heaven and a new earth, are to their joy and their playing.
The trees clap their hands when Jesus comes. (Isaiah 55:12.)
The mountains and the hills break forth in song. (Same
verse.) The skies rejoice, and there is no longer a minor
chord in the ocean's song. (Psalms 96:11-13; 98:4-9.) The
forests sing. (Isaiah 14:5-8.) The animals all play (Isaiah
11:6-9), even the reptiles. Who would think that such lowly
and hated creatures as snakes would play! But friends have
reported watching their cat, in the moonlight outside their
door, playing with a snake. It was no such "playing" as cat
with mouse, but a joyous gamboling, harmless and mutually
agreeable. If such playfulness is experienced here, how much
will it be increased when there is no more death, therefore
no more fear!
Perhaps if we cultivated greater simplicity of trust
in our heavenly Father, we might find joy even in the
January of life.
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