Why the earthworm picture? You’ll see!
Three “happenings” converged last weekend: dividing and transplanting lilies, kinda watching the world series, and listening/watching utube reels through my earbuds while the baseball game was on. How did they converge? It’ll be a challenge for me to convey to you how my scrambled, extremely visual brain works!
The Texas early fall mornings are delightfully cool and tingled my senses as I progressed through the outside morning chores of scattering chicken scratch for my lovely laying ladies, replenishing their water, scooping out their morning droppings to add to the compost bin, and proceeding to the gardening task of the day, dividing and transplanting spring flowering bulbs.
As I turned the dew dampenend soil, I disturbed several earth worms who wiggled, twisted, and burrowed again in protest. My trowel dug further and more critters of all sorts crawled out onto the surface. With a grin on my face, I dropped to my knees and rested there gazing at the teeming healthy soil.
That evening, as Tim watched the world series, I popped in my earbuds with one eye on the game and the other on my phone screen. I checked emails and messages, glanced at the news, and leisurely scrolled through what the all-knowing algorithm had to offer: gardening stuff, Lebanese folk songs and scenery, cookie decorating, quilting ideas, funny old-age memes, cat videos, and old timey hymns, as well as a few newer renditions. One of my favorite hymns, “How Great Thou Art,” was playing and I quietly sang along in Arabic and in English. A specific poignant phrase in the hymn jarringly jumped out at me and I had to rewind and hear it several times.
“O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder, consider all the worlds thy hands have made!”
Previously, these same words had guided me to look up to the heavens and see the “stars” and “thunder.” However, that evening, I was reminded of my earlier morning bulb transplanting. What an epiphany! I realized that the words, “the worlds thy hands have made,” also included the hidden underground world of living, breathing, densely populated healthy soil!
Habitually, I’m convicted to feed the hungry, poor, and left behind. But at that world-series-watching moment, I was smack-dabbedly convicted to also feed the hungry and poor soil left in my care in my own yard! That realization gifted me with a new and rededicated awe of “the worlds thy hands have made.” I can do this! I can continue to nurture the backyard underworld with home-grown compost and native plantings. Thank you Lord yet again for your words that never fail.
Do you afford yourself the opportunities to feel wonder and awe in your busy and hectic life?
Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours!