Battle Lines: Transformation
One of the most difficult lessons life teaches us is that not only is life not fair, a lot of times it doesn’t even make sense. Particularly puzzling are those times when God clearly intervenes and changes a situation, while in another situation equally dire He does not. I think of my mother dying when I was 19 and my younger brother was 14. Would the resulting downward spiral in our family have happened if God had allowed her to remain? You doubtless have your own unanswered questions about your life, especially if you have given yourself to Christ and trusted Him to guide you along the way. Why didn’t He intercede? Why was this situation left in ruins?
The Bible frequently uses illustrations from agriculture, so perhaps one here might help. It has always been a great wonder to me how a seed, which seems to be nearly wooden, can be placed into the ground to become anything at all. Left to itself, it will just sit there and do nothing, unless you count its being eaten. There’s value in that, of course, but it’s a far cry from the seed fulfilling its greatest destiny.
Then there’s water. Most of it pours from the sky, drains away somewhere, makes a mess, ends up in a puddle, lake, or river, and then gets sucked up into the clouds to repeat the process. Sounds a bit tedious really.
Finally, there’s the dirt. Dirt is not too exciting unless you happen to be a five-year-old boy. We spend a lot of time and effort getting it out of our houses, our clothes, and filtering it out of the air.
But in combination and with the right amounts they together transform that nugget of nothing into something that matters. The seed, tucked away in the soil and touched with moisture, is secretly enlivened to become something in the darkness. What’s more, if we supplement that soil with stuff that to us seems repugnant such as manure and rot, the chances of something especially good coming from it are greatly enhanced—like juicy apples, luscious corn, and so much more.
I keep going back to these things that in themselves don’t look that promising but in the right combination, and especially handled in the right way, can produce wonderful things. So, the rotting things can just rot, if you will, or they can become fertilizer, allowing something useful to be made of them.
I said at the beginning that I saw no good thing that came from my mother’s death when my brother and I were teenagers. Directly, no. But since that time, I never hear of someone losing their mother without being touched with their grief and feeling empathy that I doubt I would have known had I not wept my own tears, even after all these years. So, the rotten thing has allowed fruit to be borne, although I wish beyond all wishing there could have been another way to learn that lesson.
In the right hands — in the Lord’s hands — the combination of things that otherwise would be wasted become tools for Him to do His creative work as miraculously as He does each time a farmer plants a field. That familiar verse reminds us, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).
In the wisdom of God, waste is transformed into wonder.