What We Can Learn about The Christian Life from Compost
Part 2:
Great Things Come from Humble Ingredients
Compost is made from things most folks think have little
value. Fallen leaves, pulled weeds, and
other yard waste is taken to the curb to be hauled away. Kitchen scraps and
coffee grounds are put in the trash. But combined in a properly built pile, those humble ingredients produce something that provides great benefits to individual gardens and the general environment.
That is a lot like the way God blesses humanity; He
consistently uses people the world discounts to execute his loving,
redemptive, plan. A walk through the scriptures shows that over
and over again.
God started by choosing a small, vagrant, and highly
dysfunctional family to form a people that would lay the groundwork for
universal salvation. See generally
Genesis 12-50 and Deuteronomy 7:6-8.
Once God started down that path He repeatedly chose weak
and disadvantaged folks to execute important parts of His
plan. He chose little brother Jacob over Esau the first born. He chose the the least liked of Jacob's sons to be the vehicle for preserving His people
(and the broader society) from a devastating famine, and did so in spite of the
fact that the son had been reduced to the status of a prisoner. He used Gideon, a weak and doubting peasant, to deliver his people from
powerful oppressors. He used Hannah, a barren and wrongfully scorned second wife, to birth Samuel, a great prophet
who would deliver His people from from decadent spiritual and
political leaders. He used David, the youngest and least respected
member of his family, to provide much better leadership.
That pattern continued as God’s plan moved out into the broader world
through Jesus, the universal messiah. Jesus was born to a a
poor couple who were effectively
homeless. God had earlier chosen an aging and previously barren couple to conceive
and raise the prophet who would announce the beginning of
Jesus ministry, a prophet who himself was scorned by social elites.
Jesus
himself was not a person that the world would naturally embrace. He “had no form or majesty that we
should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” See
generally Isaiah 52:13-53:12. And Jesus himself told us that it is those on the margins of society, the poor is spirit, the meek, the persecuted, that become salt and
light to an otherwise putrid and dark world. Matthew
5:1-12.
God’s plan continued to unfold through people the world had little regard
for. His disciples were uneducated. The religious leaders of their day
did not
hide their contempt for His followers. Even regular folks were dismissive.
But God used those humble
folks powerfully. Indeed, the fact that the church continues 2,000 years later and reaches around the world is powerful proof
that “God chose[] the poor in the world to be rich in faith and
to be heirs of the kingdom,” James 2:9, Saint Paul put
it well:
God chose those who by
human standards are fools to shame the wise; he chose those who by human
standards are weak to shame the strong, those who by human standards are
common and contemptible -- indeed those who count for nothing -- to reduce to
nothing all those that do count for something, so that no human being might
feel boastful before God.” 1 Corinthians 1:19-20,25-29.
So how do we respond to that undeniable
dynamic? How we are to live, as individuals, and as parts of Christ’s body? Our
original compost analogy helps with that.
Just as a wise gardener does not share the
world’s dismissive attitude towards the humble things that make great compost, we
shouldn’t buy into society’s dismissive attitude towards those on its margins. We
should not "conform...to
the standards of this world," but
should follow God’s more perceptive, more merciful--and ultimately far more fruitful--approach. See Sirach
11:1-6, Isaiah
55, Isaiah
58:6-14, Matthew
25:31-46, James
2:1-8.
