Inch by Inch and Row by Row

You may have wondered where I have been lately.  Between my jet-setting United Methodist lifestyle, a computer crash, and Spring time in Iowa, I have to admit that I have not been faithfully walking.  My last real prayer walk was on Good Friday.  I intend to post about that soon.  Please keep your fingers crossed that I can get some video edited for that one.

Today, I am writing instead about my back yard project.  Perhaps you should know, my neighbors' yards are all pristine examples for the cover of Better Homes & Gardens.  Mine is a mixture of unmown grass, dandelions, creeping charlie, and wild violets.  

"Nature, when she sings of love, breathes through the violet."

How do you fix this problem?  Dig up the back yard, of course.  Which is what I have been doing.  One shovel-ful at a time.  

I have been enjoying this labor.  The sweat, the sun, the smells, the worms and grubs, are truly glorious.  Yet, the other day, while breaking soft Iowa clods with my hands, I began to feel guilty that I have such freedom and abundance.  I have time to waste digging up thriving plants just so I can put in different flowers.  I have land that is rich in nutrients and the luxury of enough food on my table, so I don't even have to put in vegetables if I don't want to.  

There are people who do not have land in which to grow food.  There are people whose land is salted and poisoned so that it can produce nothing for generations.  There are people who sleep in culverts and prisons, and I, through no effort of my own, get to revel in the abundance of God right out my back door.

I honestly had to stop working for a while.  I felt so convicted by my blessings, I wondered whether I ought to contact a local homeless shelter and offer my back yard for a community garden.  But, even if I had done so, it would not have made the balance right.  Without love, even if I gave all I possess away, I would be nothing but a clanging piece of brass.  Denying myself the gifts of God's abundance is not good self-denial.  Refusing the joy that I am offered, especially when it is undeserved, is not a faithful response.  So instead of sacrificing my joy in this beautiful yard and wildlife habitat behind my house, I decided instead to pray.  

The next time I went into my yard to dig, I gave thanks to God and asked God to bless the ground and to consecrate it:

-For those in Northern Sudan, whose land has become desert.

-For women and men in Afghanistan whose lives and land are being torn apart by war.

-For hungry people everywhere, who starve in the midst of plenty.

-For agricultural industry as science, business, and nature seek ways to synergize.

-For wild things which are losing their places to the vanities of human-made habitats.

To consecrate something, is to make it holy.  I pray God does make this ground holy, so that it and I both remember always the Goodness of God.