Season of Creation: Land Sunday 9/14/2014
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are you works; that I know very well.
My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven the depths of the earth.
Psalm 139: 14-15
Erika's view from home in northern Idaho.
When I hear the word “land,” I can’t help but think of Woody Guthrie’s famous song, “This land is your land, this land is my land…” This is an incomplete statement in my mind. The land we live on day in and day out does feel like ours, especially when we legally own it. But the psalmist here reminds me just how big and complex “land” is. The word used for earth in the last line of the verse is the Hebrew word aretz. It is also the same word translated as “Earth” in the scriptures. So the psalm could be read that we were wonderfully made deep in the land.
In this day and age, we tend to forget how we and the land/Earth were not just made, but wonderfully made. The land can remind us of this truth. We can make all kinds of things for you and me, like our houses, furniture, streets, parks. But the land was not made by us. It does not reflect our purposes. It does not point towards a certain human aim. Rather, it points to God’s aim. To God’s purposes. The land is good just because it is. It doesn’t need to serve a specific human enterprise to justify its existence.
Look around a forest sometime. Do you see solely human goals? A forest has no agenda for you or for itself. The trees reach upward toward life, not toward the top of the corporate ladder. Of course, there are many ways the land serves human needs. But they are not the land’s raison d’etre. If you ask the question “what is it there for?” The answer is: it just is. It is alive, and for life. No matter how we might interact with the land, it was not made for us (sorry Woody Guthrie).
For example, look at a chair and then at a tree stump. Sure, you can sit on both. They can both be used by humans for that reason. But it is so much more the case, so obviously reflected in the very nature of a chair, that it was made by people for people. With a tree stump, when you ask “what it is for?”, the answer goes beyond any person or society. A stump is home to some creatures, food for others, stabilizes the soil around it. It was made for all creatures. It was made because life is a good thing.
The land reminds us that this fact is also true of ourselves. As made in the land, made of the land, we too are fearfully and wonderfully made by God. We require no function or purpose or justification for us to be. Like the good earth, the good land, the good ground, we are. And that is enough.
When we lack attention to God’s wonderful works around us, we can forget this. We may start to think we need to be more, to be better, in order to be loved by God and others.
The land sets us straight. It can heal our need to be great. It can heal our feelings of not being good enough. It helps ease the pain of failure. The land reflects the goals of its maker, not of our society or professions or personal life. The land seeks no justification for being called good. We, like the land, reflect God’s goodness and are wonderfully made. Especially when we don’t feel good enough or strong enough or successful enough, the land helps bring us back. It models how to be a reflection of God’s good work on Earth.
Prayer: God, Thank you for the lands we live on. Help our time on the land be a reminder that we are also made by You, and that we are good because of it. Amen.