Looking for inspiration for the #prayerpractices we have been sharing throughout Lent, I came across a book I picked up years ago called “Worm Watching and other wonderful ways to teach children to pray.” The book offers themes, with reflections, activities, resources, and prayers for each of the four seasons. At the heart of this book is the idea that there are many things, like worm watching, that can teach us, inspire us, and lead us to prayer.
Jesus said: Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
Jesus uses a lot of metaphors and parables about aspects of creation to talk about life, death, ministry, and the Kingdom of God. These are reminders that there is wisdom and grace all around us. God’s gifts are plentiful and range from wiggly worms to grains of wheat and everywhere else we might look when we keep our minds and hearts open. God’s gifts are plentiful, offering grace and wonder for those who seek. It remains important for us to protect these gifts from the carelessness of human behaviour so that we can honour the giver of all good gifts.
There is wisdom in creation. We lose sight of that wisdom when we try to make creation conform to human ideals and expectations. This can have profound implications. For example, the book “Bee Time: Lessons from the Hive” goes into detail about the wonder and wisdom of bees. The way they organise and make decisions when moving the hive could be a meaningful model for human decision-making. Their connections to plants, their value in pollinating, their willingness to work together to save a bee on the verge of death. In fact, there are stories where beekeepers have found a worker bee essentially drowning in honey. Their body is covered with the sticky substance to the point where they are barely able to move. Finding the bee in this state, other bees will carefully clean the bee, giving them new life.
There are so many significant things we could learn from bees and yet humans are notorious for doing things that endanger them. Pesticides, habitat loss, the introduction of foreign and invasive species have all undermined the ability of bees to survive and thrive. Whether we want to admit it or not, this carelessness also impacts humanity’s ability to survive and thrive. As people of faith, trusting in God’s wisdom, grace, and love, we should know better. As people of faith, we should do better.
We can learn from Creation. Those lessons can teach us about our relationship with Creation. It can also offer a metaphor for our understanding of the life, death, and resurrection of God with us in Jesus who used an image from creation to talk about his own journey: Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
It is no accident that we read this passage as we come to the end of our Lenten journey. The metaphor is intended to connect with the story of the passion we will read next week. In this image we are reminded that Jesus metaphorically fell to the earth and died. But that death was not the end of the story. God has ways to transform even the most difficult moments. When seeds, and caterpillars, and leaves, and other elements of creation are laid bare, split open, reduced to goop, life can still happen. Transformation can still happen. Gifts can still be offered. There is wisdom in creation.
Such is the wonder and grace God breathed into this world and into humanity. That act of Creation continues each day. God’s love for Creation continues each day. AND God continually invites us into relationship, in Creation, in the redemption of Jesus, and the on-going offering of the Holy Spirit. There is wisdom, grace, and love in all these interactions and the possibilities these present. This we know from the metaphors that relate creation to our stories and from creation itself.
There is wisdom in Creation, and gifts, and grace, and love. The more we open ourselves to what we can learn from Creation, the more we can be blessed. And, because, through these lessons we know better, we can do better and thus be a blessing to others and Creation itself.
May we, continually open our hearts and minds to the wisdom of creation and, because we value the wisdom of Creation and the wonder and grace of God’s gifts, may we continually choose to safeguard the integrity of God’s creation and respect, sustain, and renew the life of the earth for ourselves and for generations to come. This we pray as we sing: (VT) 789 Be a Sower
