Watching grass grow
Recognizing everyone’s true nature as inherently good – the way God made us – empowers us to engage productively rather than with anxiety and anger, even during polarizing election seasons.
Next to my work window, a big patch of lawn had a big dip in it earlier this year. To fix this, the gardeners simply dumped dirt in it one day.
Grass is resilient – it wants to grow. Over the weeks that followed, I watched as the grass underneath found its way to the surface, seeking sunlight, breaking through the dirt little by little. And I found myself rooting for those blades of grass!
This made me think about the Apostle Paul in the Bible. He was definitely unwanted by the early followers of Christ Jesus, because he was tenacious in persecuting them. But then he saw a light – God’s light – that literally blinded him, and his vision was subsequently healed by a follower of Jesus. After this experience, Paul began to spread Christianity with the same tenacity he had once used to persecute Jesus’ followers – becoming responsible for a significant portion of the early growth of the Christian Church.
We might say that before his transformation, Paul was behaving like a weed – wild and disruptive. After it, he was more like grass that had broken through, ready to be cultivated with a good and clear purpose.
Paul’s true nature, the man God made, had not changed. But the light of God had changed his perspective of himself and of those around him. It seems that he came to see himself not as a destructive force, but as a unifying vessel of God, of good.
If we look at others – or even ourselves – and have a hard time seeing the good that God created, our perspective can change, too. Even where we may see annoying or destructive tendencies, God’s light can show us the purity and value of what He has made: God has created us all as His beloved children, vessels of joy and salvation. As the creation of divine Spirit, we are actually spiritual and inherently good.
This true, spiritual nature remains intact regardless of human circumstances or perspectives. Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, puts it this way: “So far as the scientific statement as to man is understood, it can be proved and will bring to light the true reflection of God – the real man, or the new man (as St. Paul has it)” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 300).
We can dump “fertile soil,” or receptivity, where our perspective of ourselves and others seems lacking. God’s light is constantly shining, calling each of us out of darkness, showing us the way. And we can root for our true nature – our spiritual nature – to become more apparent. We all have an innate receptivity to the light of Truth, a biblical name for God, and we can cultivate it by making it our daily practice to turn to this light even when darkness seems to obscure the reality of God’s creation.
I have been thinking about this lesson in my prayers about my country’s political climate, where so much of the effort seems to be in “cutting down” others or “burying them with dirt.” God’s light is powerful enough to grow metaphorical grass through dirt – replacing weed-like, human traits with an awareness of everyone’s higher nature as God’s children. God is actually the only true power and creator in the universe, without which nothing would exist.
As for the unsightly scene outside my window – not only has it once again become a beautiful lawn, it no longer has a hole in it.
I am now spending more of my mental energy rooting for the grass to find the light, metaphorically speaking, rather than hoping for the dirt to go away. This has been especially helpful during this election cycle – prayer has freed me from the kind of anxiety, fear, and anger that have crept in during previous election seasons for me.
This has enabled me to understand and learn from a variety of perspectives about the challenges facing my country. More importantly, I have felt more capable of praying about and engaging with these issues, rather than reacting negatively.
I look forward to casting my vote in the coming elections for the candidate I prefer. But regardless of the outcome, my prayer is to recognize God’s presence and power, and everyone’s God-given ability to see it.