Seed Catalogs

Seed catalogs have started to come in the mail again.  I suppose that there are some folks out there that don't get any of these colorful reminders that spring is on its way, but I get plenty of them.

I suppose it is a little amusing that at the beginning of February, I can go outside to shovel my driveway and then come inside and flip through a catalog and decide what I will plant in the spring.

I always look through these catalogs and circle the seeds that I want.  I guess you could call it the contemplation stage, because once the seeds are ordered and begin to arrive, I have committed to a certain level of work.

None of the seeds I have ever purchase plant themselves or weed themselves (you would think here in the twenty first century we would be there, but not yet).  Somehow it takes a lot of effort to get seeds from being little tiny bits of potential to something that actually bears fruit.

I suppose that is why I like gardening so much.  What you get from your garden bears direct relationship to the effort that you put into it.

Perhaps it is easy to think that the rest of life is different.  Certainly some people inherit lots of money or seem to get promotions without really trying, but for the things that matter most -- relationships with friends, family, and God, there are no short cuts.  We get out exactly what we put in.

 

Raining Mucus?

"Did you know that snot and boogers are the same thing?"  Elliot asked his siblings.

"No, Elliot," Vince said.  "Boogers are something you eat."

The other children began to laugh.  "Those are burgers, Vince,"  Anna told him.

Elliot cleared his throat,  "I wish,"  he said, as dramatically as a four year old with half a mouthful of meatloaf can.  "I wish, it would rain snot!"

"That's gross,"  Anna said, wrinkling up her face in disgust.

"Well," I said.  "If that was the case, I guess you'd feed Zeus whenever it rained.  But I guess you could always use a Kleenex for an umbrella."

I'm pretty glad that this earth -- that our Universe was not designed by a four year old.

Worse than the idea of a child designing the things we see, many believe in no Creator.  There are plenty of people who believe that everything here happened by chance.  That the Universe is an unfriendly, capricious place, where evil routinely happens because of the idle whims of fate and yet, when I awaken to see a beautiful sunrise, or see a rainbow after a rain storm, I can't believe that.

This world is such an amazing place because someone a lot smarter than Elliot designed it that way.

God has put into place a Universe full of beauty and order and light.  Whatever direction you choose to look, there is something worth seeing -- something that shows an Almighty God's fingerprints and does so a lot more than a mucus rain shower ever would.