The book of nature within special revelation

The Bible is very powerful when you, as you read it, imagine all the power and beauty of general revelation there, especially the book of nature, all around and above and shot through the people, places, things, and events. The landscape, the sky, the stars, the rain, and wind, the sun, the vistas, the mountains, the rivers, the hills, the forests, the storms, the ocean, the waves, the dirt, the crops, the trees, the fields, the meadows, and the villages and towns and cities built in the midst of it all. Armies arrayed in battle, the travel routes, ancient even for their days. All of it.

This is why people are moved by photographs or visits to the Holy Land. To see such background. It's also what is involved when we are moved by nature anywhere, in person, or from history, or art. It's all evocative of the biblical narrative. The history of redemption. A fishing village in Italy is as biblical as a lush forest, almost antediluvian in its impressions, of the early New World of America. Imagine the stars above the mountains surrounding Geneva, in Calvin's day, before city lights. Early American painting showing farmlands of now New England, Connecticut or the now boroughs of New York City, depicted a very lush land, with a heavy, low sky, again antediluvian in the impressions. But we describe it as 'antediluvian' because it is all general revelation, it is all biblical in that sense.

General revelation informs special revelation. We see it too in the impressions we get from great literature. The rhythms of life and of nature in an English village or the similar scenes depicted in the great Russian novels of the 19th century. Homer was 'biblical' to the English who made those epic poems central to their culture. The landscape of Don Quixote is biblical in its general impressions of dusty journey.

What I am getting at is our reading of the Bible benefits from some strong work of bringing up to view the natural world that it is taking place in. The book of nature within special revelation.