A Garden is Full of Recylced Energy

Today I had a gardener's, scientist's and theologian's perspective on my soaking bowls of parsley plant stalks.  In order to have an herb garden, my husband and I tilled up the soil beside our patio.  Then I added A LOT (and I mean a lot) of organic material to replace nearly six inches of clay we removed.  Then I planted a little two dollar and fifty scent parsley plant about 6 weeks ago.  

The plant's DNA computed that there was enough sunlight, water and nutritious soil around.  So, it began to convert all the energy it was absorbing through the roots and its solar panels (green leaves) into more and more stalks of curled parsley leaves until they were so big they began to flop on the ground like a tired dog.

Some would say the universe is just a cycle of energy being transferred around and around and around.  I think it's amazing to think about how the "core" of the parsley plant took the energy it was given and produced an abundant plant that would actually benefit from my taking two thirds of its stalks.  (Now it is freed up to produce more!)  

But it can't possibly end there.  Not for me.  Where did all this energy come from.  I mean when you look around your garden (or just all the volunteer weeds and saplings that grow every summer), look at ALL the energy these plants are taking in through their solar panels.  Not to mention all the energy in decaying organic material in the ground that both plants and critters eat (earthworms, pill bugs, centipedes, etc).   The growth of plants is no miracle.  My backyard is a power plant!  My plants are all little factories converting energy into very different, specific forms of plant life.  Some to eat, to fuel our own bodies.  Some to look at for their beauty, to fuel our souls.  (And some to break our backs pulling them out of the vegetable and flower beds.) 

As a gardener and Christ follower, I marvel at these profound realities of recycled energy.  And then I am astounded in contemplating that One energy source outlasts them all, fuels them all, created them all.  The God above all other gods.  The Scientist above all other scientists.  The Gardener above all other gardeners.  

The Great I AM that I AM.  Self-existent One.  

Apart from the air that I breathe, I cannot keep my own body alive, even for an hour.  Yet, He is the Self-Sustaining One who created our Universe, our stars, our Sun, our garden Eco-system.  All that we rely on to live.  He is the air of our souls.  Perhaps that is why one of His names is Holy Spirit.    

One of God's great works and up and coming Starbucks spokesperson.

He is the "atmosphere" that allows all things (known and unknown, visible and invisible) to exist.  He sustains different parts of the universe differently.  He is described as holding all things together.  Every cell in my body was designed by Him to generate the energy it does which keeps me alive.   Even all the invisible qualities that my person hood generates from the unmined recesses of my brain is held together and sustained by Him.  Apart from Him, we cannot keep our souls alive, not even for an hour.  He is the original source from which the parsley grows.  He is the source of my life.  He is more than a good gardener.  A gardener plants and cultivates the seed.  He created the seed--from nothing.