I'm sitting beside the Sabbath Trail, which is this really cool trail,
that starts and ends at the Washington Seventh Day Adventist Church,
in Washington, New Hampshire.
Which is the first Seventh Day Adventist church,
the oldest Seventh Day Adventist church.
And this is a trail that winds through the woods
for about a mile, it's got twenty-two separate stops on it,
each of which has a part in tracing the Sabbath through the Bible, through the ages.
If you ever get a chance to visit, I highly recommend it.
For our purposes, this trail is an ideal spot to continue
our look at the selfishness paradigm.
We have to wait to see a pure expression of the loving-kindness paradigm, God's paradigm.
We won't see that until heaven.
But today, even though Satan has twisted things around severely,
God, as master designer of the earth, can still be seen.
The author Ellen White, in the book Desire of Ages,
talks about how there's both good and evil in the world,
and we can see God in nature still.
Where the only thing that is, or can completely be evil,
is the hearts of those humans who decide to be wholly evil.
And here is what she says on page twenty of her book.
She says, "Now sin has marred God's perfect work,
yet that handwriting remains.
Even now, all created things declare the glory of His excellence.
There is nothing, save the selfish heart of man, that lives unto itself.
No bird that cleaves the air, nor animal that moves upon the ground,
but ministers to some other life.
There is no leaf of the forest, or lowly blade of grass but has its ministry.
Every tree and shrub and leaf pours forth that element of life
without which neither man nor animal could live.
And man and animal, in turn, minister to the life of the tree and shrub and leaf.
The flowers breathe fragrance and unfold their beauty in blessing to the world,
the sun sheds its light to gladden a thousand worlds.
The ocean, itself the source of all of our springs and fountains,
receives the streams from every land, but takes to give.
The mists ascending from its bosom fall in showers to water the earth,
that it may bring forth and bud."