Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Bringing Order out of Chaos

This is my first Spring in North Carolina, and oh what a beautiful Spring it is.  It is Spring Break for me here at Chowan, and it nicely coincides with plants just beginning to grow.  With that comes yard work.  Thankfully, I now have time to deal with the work, and oh how much there is to do.  I have now spent three full days working with my hands outside.  My body aches in places it has not ached in a long time.

It is easy to just see yard work as a chore, some unpleasant activity that just has to get done.  And believe me, I still see it that way some times.  Yet, this week, I have tried to see more in my actions.  More in my digging, weeding, weed whacking, planting, cutting than I have in the past.  I see it as participating in God's creation.

In Genesis 1 we see God bringing order out of Chaos.  God takes his creation that was tohu va vohu (formless and empty), and he forms it and fills it, bringing order to the creation which at first existed just as a chaotic body of water.  Now, I get to take my yard, which in many places was empty, and in even more places was formless, and I get to bring form.  I get to hack away at the plants until form appears.  I get to fill empty spots with plants that bring beauty.

Perhaps the most chaos that I tamed this week was a plant that we could not identify.  It was about 7 feet tall and just looked like a tangle of growing things.  I started to pull, hack, and cut, and behold, what was once chaos took shape.  Turned out, a tenacious vine had taken over three trees and an Azalea bush.  Well, after the painstaking task of removing the vine, and pruning the trees and bush, I now have what might become an attractive part of the yard.  The Azaleas are just getting ready to bloom.  I have yet to identify the trees, but they are budding as well.  It feels good to bring order out of chaos, even if it hurts at the same time.

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