Reflection: ‘Designed for redemption’

For a lifetime a tree sucks and stores rich nutrients from the good ground. That means, no matter her untimely death or old age, she’s still thrumming with the promise of good things to come. Her soft woody fibres break down, disintegrate, decompose and decay. But in death she is not alone. Laid to rest in nature’s lab, she finds lively company in plant and animal mishmash and there transpires the alchemy of vegetable and animal to chemical and mineral.

Voila! Humus becomes the fertile seedbed for new life.

We’ve become quite numb to the nature of nature all around us. Transformation tells and retells the supernatural story of creation. And transformation also tells the supernatural story of grace.

O Cross that liftest up my head,

I dare not ask to fly from thee;

I lay in dust, life’s glory dead,

And from the ground there blossoms red

Life that shall endless be.              (‘O Love that wilt not let me go’, hymn by George Matheson)

Prayer:

Lord Jesus, Resurrection and Life! I believe. Stir my faith. Renew my confidence. Give your world-wide church fresh vision through your transforming power now … and into your eternal kingdom.