Articles
God Makes It Grow
A friend posted this photo on FB today, and it reminded me of a hunting trip I took about 35 years ago to Colorado with some brothers in Christ. We were riding on horseback a few miles into the wilderness area, and some of the trails were on steep grades alongside of dangerous cliffs. As we were riding along, we saw several trees that grew out of the almost vertical rocky mountain sides, perpendicular at 90 degrees then turned upward and grew into 70-80 foot tall trees, attached only by a root or two.
We commented then, facetiously, that this sort of thing was just the result of the "big bang", in other words denying that theory, we recognized this could only happen with the hand of God. The beauty of nature, the rivers, streams and mountains, one only has to look at them to know they have a creator, and a caretaker.
A couple of years ago, in a desperate attempt to get some grass where I had tried for 9 years to grow some, I bought a pallet of grass. I tilled the area and smoothed out the soil in preparation of the area, and when I was ready to lay the grass, I noticed the top three or four layers of the pallet had dried out, and the grass looked dead. I pealed those off, and managed to lay out the remainder and have a few squares left over. I had another patch of dirt on the opposite side of my driveway that I didn't care if it grew grass or not. So I went ahead and just hurriedly pieced together the remaining 8 or 10 squares of green grass and about 15-20 squares of the dead grass on top of the area, rocks and all, not doing any soil preparation at all.
For weeks, I watered the green side, fertilized it, watered it some more, and did everything I could to help it grow. I didn't give any significant TLC to the other side of the drive where I expected everything to die anyway, haphazardly watering it but mostly neglecting it. I kept the one side moist, and made an effort to keep it from dying in the summer heat, while watching even the green squares on the opposite side turn brown and dry out. You probably know where this is headed don't you? God came along with a little rain shower, about an inch, and within just a few days, my side was browning from either over watering or over fertilizing, but the side that was dead, or so I thought, started greening up. His creation responded just as He created it to do, it greened up and flourished with His rain water, and it grew in spite of my total neglect.
This year, both sides looked pretty good, "God's side" and mine, and both of us watered both sides.
The moral of the story is that God created us too, to function in His image (Genesis 1:27, 5:1), to do good deeds and works (Eph 2:10) and He equipped us for the work (2 Tim 3:17) and He has an expectation of results (Col 1:10). We may fall down like the tree in the picture, we may face adversity like the trees growing out of the hillside, and we may be mistreated by life and the world around us, like my grass that I neglected because I thought it was dead. But God can make beautiful, healthy, worthwhile and righteous things out of us anyway as our creator and our caretaker. Let's not try and limit what He can do!
