Richard L. Evans
The Spoken Word
16 May 1965
EVERYTHING TOUCHES EVERYTHING
Nearly a century ago John Muir wrote My First Summer in the Sierra, in which, looking at the great expanse of nature, he said: “No Sierra landscape that I have seen holds anything truly dead or dull, or any trace of what … is called rubbish or waste; everything is perfectly clean and pure and full of divine lessons. This . . . interest attaching to everything . . . the hand of God becomes visible; then it seems reasonable that what interests Him may well interest us. When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”
This sentence deserves second consideration: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” There is awesome evidence of the oneness of the universe, of an infinite Intelligence and Administrator, of God and his eternal plan and purpose.
In a sense, nothing is insignificant. No person, no pattern is unimportant; no act is inconsequential; no word, no thought fails to be recorded, no prayer unheard; no need unnoticed. When we pluck up any flower, its roots are attached to all the earth, as is every rock that is cracked away from every crevice. All the glory and the beauty of the spring, the growth of a seed, the harvest, the miracle of birth, of the body’s healing and renewing itself— all this and infinitely more adds its assurance of divine plan and purpose.
All this gives faith and hope and peace, and overshadows sorrow and dissension, wars and wickedness, selfishness and deceit. And the meaning of it all is that we may become more like him who made us in his own image, with possibilities that are limitless and everlasting as we search for truth, with courage to accept it when we find it.
God our Father seeks only our salvation, as the hearts of fathers turn to their children and children to their fathers and learn of this oneness and worth. God help us to find our oneness with him and with one another, with the peace that comes with repentance and the assurance that comes with being part of his great purpose “. . . to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”