Earth Day: Formless and Void into Good

The third planet from the sun is approximately 200 million miles of constantly changing geography, EARTH. Before this constant change, Genesis 1:2 tells us the earth was formless, void, empty, or waste. The Message gives us a clearer picture. Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness. The Living Bible records the earth as a chaotic mess.

Picture the earth as bottomless, as nothing.  Picture the earth as a chaotic mess.  Then maybe, the next three words, God's Spirit hovered, will seem more miraculous. 

God's Spirit hovered and breathed life into nothingness.  God's Spirit hovered and breathed goodness, filling the emptiness. God's Spirit hovered and breathed color into inky blackness.

II'm a big fan of Before and After, and I definitely prefer God's After concerning Earth. Spring in Anderson, South Carolina is breathtaking, and I hope we fill it up on Earth Day with more color, more trees, more texture, more order and life.  Whatever we plant, it will be good.

For my own little earth, my yard, I also like the After.  Eighteen years ago, my house was lined with hedges, my lawn dotted with trees, and in between were large areas of nothing.

So, I started to work. I've spent seventeen years filling the nothing with trees, shrubs, and flowers, hoping for something good. My little earth is full of hits and misses, but I continue planting, changing, and growing for two reasons.

First, I absolutely love it.  It's a hobby. I enjoy the solitude and creating a beautiful garden spot from nothing.  What once were empty grassy areas are now filled with knock-out roses and Dutch iris.  Woods once displaying darkness are now lined with light giving pink and white azaleas and dogwoods.

Second, I have a plan.  If friends and neighbors are waiting on my yard to be complete in my lifetime, though, they'll be disappointed.  My plan is to always have a work in progress with many before and after sections.  I plant perennials in one spot but move them later.  Iris and canna lily will be moved this year as the sugar maple they're planted around finally becomes the shade tree I've longed for.  My Yoshino cherry has grown so much that there's no more grass, so I'm moving hardy "we don't care where you plant us" daylilies in the bare spots. These plants won't like the move at first, but I'll feed them until they adapt to the new space.  

 

In my head, I have a purpose and a picture for my little earth, but as long as I live here, it will never be complete. I enjoy spending time with my little earth too much to leave it as is. When storms or disease take away trees or shrubs, my little earth looks different, but my plan is still to make it good year after year.  Regardless of what happens geographically, I continue to dig, pull and plant.  Trees, shrubs and flowers continue to change and grow.  That's my plan.  It's what I love.

Spring is for planting. Many will plant on Earth Day. They have a plan, and that plan involves change and growth and good for their little earth.

Look around.  What was once nothingness is good, isn't it?

Now, look inside.  As God did for the earth, He also does for our souls.  Left on my own, I'm void.  Without His Spirit hovering, I'm bottomless and empty.  My soul without the Holy Spirit is a chaotic mess.  God's plan is to change me, to grow me, to make me good.  He knows what it looks like, so He feeds me and pulls out ugly, dangerous weeds. God moves me, and I feel uncomfortable for some time. Storms and disease come, but the Holy Spirit continues His work in progress for His good.

God loves His creation and has the power to miraculously take us, formless and empty, and breath order and continually form us and breath new life into us, never leaving us as is.

God has a plan, and in time, He will see that it is good,

Katy

 

 

  

 

 
 

 

Go to Sleep

 

Adults look forward to sleep,  and we do what we can to stay asleep.  Children do what they can to stay awake, and we do all we can to make them sleep.

It wasn't uncommon to read six or seven books to Luke, followed by singing every Baptist hymn I knew plus every verse of Just As I Am and Amazing Grace.  When he was five, we spent fifty nights learning about every state, including population, land area, state bird, state resources, etc.  For forty-two longer nights, a different president was his bedtime story.

I stood beside Hope's crib when she was a toddler and patted her bottom, rubbed her back and sang. Thinking  she was asleep,  I slowly lifted my hand from her back,  but without lifting her check or opening her eyes, she whispered, "shong," which was my signal to continue.  At the age of five, her bedtime story was simple: one book, usually about Barbie or a Princess, but the songs were complicated,  either The Bare Necessities from Jungle Book  (I only knew the chorus) or A Spoon Full of Sugar from Mary Poppins (It didn't matter that I'm an alto).

James required two or three books, and my creative Water Medley and Jesus Medley worked perfectly as lullabies in his glider rocker.  By the age of five, though, James found LOTS to do in his room, so we stayed with him until he fell asleep.

"Mommy, when are you going to leave?"

 "When you're asleep."

 After a few minutes... "I'm asleep now, you can leave."

"No, you're not."

"How will you know I'm asleep?"

"I can hear you breathing."

He closed his eyes, breathed as loudly as possible, and started the fake snore.  Nice try, Jaybird.

 

He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. Psalm 23:2

 

After reading Charles Allen's God's Psychiatry many years ago, Psalm 23 became a favorite passage and eventually very real to me.

The shepherd starts the sheep grazing about 4 a.m. The sheep walk steadily as they graze; they are never still. By 10 a.m., the sun is beaming down and the sheep are hot, tired, and thirsty. The wise shepherd knows that the sheep must not drink when it is hot, neither when its stomach is filled with undigested grass. So the shepherd makes the sheep lie down in green pastures, in a cool, soft spot. The sheep will not eat lying down, so it chews its cud, which is nature’s way of digestion. Study the lives of great people, and you will find every one of them drew apart from the hurry of life for rest and reflection. Great poems are not written on crowded streets, lovely songs are not written in the midst of clamoring multitudes; our visions of God come when we stop. The Psalmist said, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). The sheep will drink only from still waters. If there are no still waters available, while the sheep are resting, the shepherd will gather up stones to fashion a dam across a small stream to form a pool from which even the tiniest lamb may drink without fear. Even while he is sleeping, the Shepherd is working to prepare for his needs tomorrow.

 

I knew the physical benefits of sleep, so I devoted many hours making my children rest their bodies for another day.   Unfortunately,  I didn't devote many hours for my own rest and stillness for spiritual health; instead, I filled my days with nonstop noise and deeds (as many distractions as possible) to avoid silence.  So, as the Psalmist promised, my Shepherd made me lie down and be still.  Starving for spiritual food, I was led to hours alone in strange stillness of cool, nourishing pastures without the usual noises hiding His voice, to reading and searching (no music or television) and an opportunity to drink water my Shepherd carefully prepared, and although it was difficult being made to STOP and REST, I'm forever grateful. I'm hardheaded and easily distracted, so I know He will do it again when necessary, for my Shepherd "restores my soul.."

 

Katy