Published on 04/14/2008

If you were really lucky, your parents would have dropped you off at Waldkindergarten today. Today's Wall Street Journal describes this growing movement to return children to nature. Germany has 700 of these "forest kindergartens," in which children spend their days outdoors all year long. Blackboards give way to pine cones. Children learn about nature and themselves. At one recent class, five girls and four boys inspected a worm and then jumped in puddles, examined a hibernating lizard, and painted Easter eggs. One made "chocolate-vanilla-strawberry-herbal pudding" by stirring mud with a stick. That's a delicacy even I could cook.

The movement is gaining popularity in Scandinavia, Switzerland and Austria; the first Waldkindergarten opened in Portland, Oregon last fall. Class in a forest sounds like a wonderful idea, but I can see a problem in Dallas: we don't have any forests. Children playing under a freeway overpass just doesn't have the same allure.

Picturing a group of laughing kids romping through a forest does your soul good, doesn't it? Our first parents were made in a Garden, and there's something about us that yearns to join them. I love walking around a lake or hiking through some trees. As I'm typing these words in my study at church this morning, I can look out my window at Northwest Highway and its gridlocked cars on the right or the green lawn and live oaks on the left. Guess which direction gets my vote.

It was my privilege the last three weeks to lead two study tours of Israel. (Whenever this daily essay doesn't begin with current events, you can know that I'm out of the country and wrote the series before I left.) My favorite place in the Holy Land is Galilee, that gloriously beautiful hill country surrounding the Sea of Galilee and the Upper Jordan River. Jesus could have lived anywhere on earth, and was omnisciently wise to live there. As a dear friend put it, Jesus got to live at his lake house. Even his divine soul needed time with his Father in his creation--days spent hiking the hills, retreating atop mountain peaks, sailing on the water. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be there today?

Here's the good news: you and I can meet Jesus in his world even if we're sitting in front of a computer screen in a manmade room. You don't need a picture of Galilee on your screensaver to experience our Lord's homeland, or a digital photo of the Jordan River to baptize your soul in its water. There is a way to meet Jesus in his world while sitting in ours. It will be my privilege to lead a tour of the Holy Land for the heart this week. Let's begin tomorrow.