The Miracle of Not Knowing

Our green tomatoes have nearly finished fattening up on their vines.  In fact, the chubby little cherry tomatoes nearly explode in my fingers when I pluck them, so juicy are they.  Leaves potpourri the grass, sending the message that we had better hasten to finish hemming summer up before we are blanketed in rain.  Apple cider is in the freezer, and gallons of fresh chipotle salsa, too.  All of this plentiful harvest that signals change ahead is comforting, because I know exactly what to expect.

I know the first frost will soon appear, and with it our dog Bentley’s fur will thicken, the garden will be put into hibernation, and Thanksgiving and Christmas will soon thread through the tapestry of the year.  For me, the turning over from one season to another is like the thrill of opening the door to a well-loved and memory-filled vacation house which I have not seen in a year.  Welcoming. Nostalgic. Warm.  

But I like to wonder if the first seasonal change brought trepidation or curiosity for Adam and Eve?  For this would have been before God’s promise to Noah: “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease. {Gen. 8:22}” So when the days began to shorten, or when change began to cloak the familiar garden, I wonder if Adam and Eve looked at each other in awe or in dread?  

In my mind’s narrative, the story surely progresses with awe.  They knew this new world was all the great masterwork of the God they loved.  They surely would have run to confide in Him the changes they saw and to ask what other changes they could expect in the garden.  For it was God’s unconditional goodness that made the garden a paradise, and as long as they trusted in His goodness, paradise it would remain.  

The irony is that the moment they gave a home in their minds to the vagabond of doubt in God’s true goodness, the moment they began to fear the paradise was not as good as they had trusted, that was when they began the destruction of paradise with their own hands.  

The psalmist said, “Oh, how great is Your goodness, which You have laid up for those who fear You, which You have prepared for those who trust in You In the presence of the sons of men! {Ps. 31:19}”  

Oh that we could return to that childlike, untainted trust of Adam and Eve before the fall!   

With that kind of trust, we would look at the changing seasons of life, not with a fatalistic dread of what unexpected bomb is going to drop next, but with an uncomplicated awe at watching God’s plan unfold. 

I love the changing seasons because I know what is going to happen next, but what would happen if I dared to love the changing seasons of life because I don’t know what is going to happen next?  That’s the attitude that takes a red maple leaf from mundane to miraculous.  

 

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“This Must Be the Place-explored!,” © 2008 Bridget H, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.