| A Message "How sweet are Your words to my taste, Sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through Your precepts I get understanding; Therefore I hate every false way. Your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light to my path." Psalm 119:103 -105 |
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Lessons from the Lawn By Timm Artus “The Lord looks from Heaven; He beholds all the sons of men. From the place of His habitation He looks upon all the inhabitants of the earth.”--Psalm 33:13-14 So I’m getting one of the best calf workouts possible: cutting the grass with a push mower. On a thirty degree angle hill. I use the term “cutting the grass” just as an introduction. I’ve been cutting grass since I convinced my Dad I was old enough to do so. And that was one of the ten biggest mistakes of my entire existence. You should avoid learning to cut grass as long as possible, because once you learn to cut grass you get to cut grass. Over and over and over again. And I’ve managed to downgrade. In Chicago, where my Dad handed me the reigns and said “go for it,” the lawns were small and flat. In South Carolina they are large and hilly. My first home’s lawn was a spotty mess. You could actually see where the builder’s flunky had thrown the grass seed by hand. The grass grew in wide arcs. It took years of work to get grass to grow, then a flood wiped out the fledgling turf. When we moved, we found property on a big unfloodable hill (unless Genesis wrongly states we won’t have a world-wide deluge, we’re just too high for flood waters to wreck me again. But now I have a new problem: erosion. Since we’re on a strict budget, we could buy the new house, we just couldn’t buy the sod. So the builder put in grass seed. This time I watched and they used spreaders. The day we moved in, however a five year drought ended and the rains came tumbling down. I laughed. No flood waters were going to rise and rip my grass away by the very root! Ha! But the rain just kept coming and the thirty degree hill was just too steep for the poor little seeds of grass. They washed down the hill and into the woods. I can take you there now. The grass is beautiful and lush. Totally overseeded, loaded with all the fertilizer and top soil. A veritable garden! The rest of my yard is what I like to call Mars. Orange soil, rocky, and devoid of life. I have a few rutted areas where grass seed pooled and I have tufts of grass, so when NASA came to film there supposed Sojourner footage instead of actually going to Mars they had to pick their locations carefully. Close to the far north west end of the property. I can take you there now. Orange soil, rocky, and devoid of life. The rest is starting to green up. Clover. Dandelions. Timothy grass. Moss. So if the rain isn’t coming down I spend two to three hours in the hot South Carolina sun cutting the grass. Actually I push and drag the lawnmower over the ruts and rocks trimming the weeds down a bit. They laugh at me and sprout right behind me. It’s almost worthless. Except it’s great for my calves. Those little leg muscles (the arm equivalent of the Popeye forearms) take a beating. So I pretend it’s good for the lawn and for me. But there’s one spiritual application (past “patience” and “diligence”) I’d like to speak on. Why is it exactly that no matter where I want grass to grow, it grows elsewhere? the flower beds are sprouting with centipede. The driveway has grass growing in the tiny crevice of cement pads. There’s grass inching over the curb into the street. But the lawn area? Nope, won’t grow well there. Tilling, fertilizing, raking, weeding, feeding, watering--none of it seems to matter. I have a plan for the lawn and the grass is just not playing along. Why is there tall lush grass in the space between the house and the walking stones to the deck? I can’t get the lawn mower in there. I can barely get the string trimmer in there. But every week the grass is three inches taller along the foundation of the house than in the middle of the dressed and kept yard. There’s a spot in the yard where we built up a stone wall (from the rocks in the NASA Mars back lot) for flowers and a birdbath. Do you know I have grass growing in-between the rocks ABOVE the lawn? How did the grass seed wash up the rocks? And I pull the grass blades out one week only to see them regrown the next. Oh, sure they’re hardy and strong there. I step on the grass in the front yard and there’s a Timm foot-shaped dead spot there the next week! It’s not a perfect analogy, of course: I think it’s slightly random and slightly advantageous. The driveway offers some protected soil that’s basically loose run off. The spots near the house are offered shade from the hot sun. The flower beds are richer in nutrients and better tilled. But I also see some rebellion there. The “master” has a plan and the “servants” have gone against my will. The Lord planted a beautiful garden in Genesis 2:8-9 and put Adam in the middle of it to dress and keep it. It was man’s job to maintain the area as the most beautiful of all the plants of the world were displayed. It was labor, but it wasn’t yet sweat inducing (Genesis 3:19). And it wasn’t painful, as there were no weedy thistley thorny itchy plants to choke out the flowers (Genesis 3:18). So what we’re talking here was making the great garden even better. Imagine the lush beauty as Adam strolled along near the rhinos. Perhaps plucking a leaf that obscured a newly blooming snapdragon. As a tiger cub snuggled his ankle for a pat on the head, Adam arranged for some tall sunflowers to poke through some hanging ivy. Later in the day he had to shoo away a brachiosaur who was about to trample some new bamboo shoots (and the pandas that played there). Nothing at all like his great-great-great to the nth degree grandson Timm’s garden extravaganza. It’s hot enough here that I wouldn’t mind Adam’s dress code, but no, I’ve got the poison oak and weeds and thorns. That could get messy. And itchy. And bloody. So I live under the curse and have to fight the plant life. I live under the curse and have to deal with the gnats and mosquitos and flies. I live under the curse so I freely disregard the Lord’s plan for my growth too. Like the errant grass blades, I jump the curb. The master has a specific place he wants me to grow, but I want different. I want new. I want better. It seems like more fun over there--why is the Lord keeping me from the fun of the streets? Or how about that easy life in the loose dirt in the driveway cracks? Why do I have to work so hard to grow where God planted me. The eighth inch soil on the cement is far easier. I want a life of ease. Then there’s the glorious soil of the flower bed! I can grow next to the important people--those flashy flowers! Everybody wants to hang out there with the popular plants. Why is the Lord such a buzz kill?! I may think the soil is better over the curb on the driveway or with the flowers, but if I migrate onto the dry asphalt, I may find some loose dirt and live for a while, but the scorching sun, sparse water, and squashing car tires will end my existence soon enough. The soil in the driveway offers no deep rooting. I will be stunted in growth. If I stay in the flower beds I will be plucked away for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. So, too, the Lord plants each one of us in a specific place for a specific purpose. We can grow where the Lord wants us or rebel. If He were to transplant us, then too, He has a continuing plan for our best existence: filling in a dead area, providing growth to a far off spot, one doesn’t always see the whole “yard” from the blade level view. So I’ve found it best to leave it to the One who is above all and sees all. He who sees the “end from the beginning” is wiser than me. I can’t foresee four minutes into the future, much less all of human history. Who would have seen me moving 705 miles from my home and family in Chicago? How would I have guessed my wife would be there? And now we have four children! What will there lives bring? I would have never thought to transplant my roots, and had it been up to me, I wouldn’t have found a wonderful, beautiful wife. But the Lord sews a tapestry of lives and activities that we don’t perceive. He brings together threads of life in amazing ways for His own goals. Even as men rage against Him, He still works His art. As Christians we should not be unwilling to do the Master’s plan. To grow where He plants us. To thrive as He wills. He wants the best for our lives as He tends to His children. Galatians 3:25, 26, 29: “But after that faith is come we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For you are the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. And if you be Christ’s then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” And though it’s hard, sweaty, boring work, my property must be maintained. I have to cut the grass until my son unwisely offers to help. New seeding and some flats of sod have brought progress to our Mars landscape. And I get a calf work out to boot! Once again, “all things are working together for good to them that Love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28) |