Let the Earth Bring Forth Fruit
And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:11-12).
So we’re going to pause on day three for a little while … did you notice that God didn’t start creating life until he got the preliminaries out of the way? He took care of the lighting issue and made sure that the irrigation system (aka water) was installed and the soil was nice and fertile. That’s a huge lesson for us – we need to put things in place before we can expect to reap the rewards. So many of us think that because we’re Christians we don’t have to put any effort into obtaining certain things … But if God – the Creator of everything, the penultimate person – took time to plan and lay the groundwork, how much more should we who were created by him?
There’s something else I want to point out here: everything had its own seed except grass … did you notice that? I always wondered why grass will grow even if you never landscape the property. In fact, even if you cement the area if there is a single crack in the concrete sooner or later there will be a few blades of grass sticking out. Thinking about it now, I wonder if God caused the earth to naturally produce grass because he knew at some point mankind would be on a mad dash to populate every single inch of the earth? But nah! There has to be a deeper purpose… let’s research: what is grass and what does it tell about the Creator?
In the simplest terms – grass is grown from seed. At its most complex grass is 70% water, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus. As it goes through the process of photosynthesis, it also contains chlorophyll and cellulose. The beauty of grass is that all its components naturally occur in nature. Additionally, the seeds are blown about by the wind and needs only water and sunlight to grow and do well. But why are we talking about grass? I’ll tell you, here are three lessons we can learn from the grass:
1. Be flexible. Sometimes we need to let go of our agendas and our inhibitions and just let go.
2. Learn to thrive under minimal conditions. There are times when as human beings we require a lot of things for us to do well. I’ll give an example: in most parts of Jamaica grass is cut with a machete. It’s a very manual process. The step up from that would be a weed whacker. This involves some manual labor, but all in all, it’s less work than a machete. In more advanced countries the typical way of cutting the lawn is by use of a lawnmower, there are even ones that you can sit and drive around while it cuts your grass.
The point? A riding lawnmower is an efficient way to trim a lawn but it could just as easily be done with a machete.
3. Never allow anyone to stop you from doing what you were meant to do. Have you ever noticed how fast grass grows? Seriously! It seems as though ten seconds after you cut the grass it starts growing back. Some of us need to learn that level of resilience. The lesson should be to bloom where planted, wherever that may be.
I love looking at weeds. I know, weird. But I can’t help being amazed that even something that was the result of a world gone bad can still possess such beauty. God made some beautiful weeds y’all. Next time you see some grass growing wild take a second to look for the beauty in it. When you find, thank Jehovah for his creativity.