By Rev. Ronald Jansen
One of my favorite books is Annie Dillard’s A Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek. One chapter is named “Fecundity.” The word means, “The ability to produce offspring; especially in large numbers.” Genesis puts it simply, “Be fruitful and multiply.”
Oh that fruitfulness was so simple. In one mind numbing example after another she writes of the force of life that causes plants and the animal world to overproduce in such numbers that the whole complicated process that we sometimes call “Nature” leaves her quoting the prophet Ezra at one point, “And when I heard this thing, I rent my garment and my mantle, and plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard, and sat down astonished.” Now Ezra wasn’t astonished by the process in which life and death is produced in overwhelming abundance. No, Ezra was appalled by the number of foreign wives the returning Jews had brought with them from exile. Of course, fecundity had been at work among them also.
What brought all of this to mind, as if anyone really cares, are the two Rose of Sharon bushes in my side yard and the Cleomes in the front yard. Both produce such a large number of seeds that their offspring blanket the area when the weather turns warm. So with hoe and fingers I eradicate that miniature forest of Rose of Sharons. I will allow one or two Cleomes to display their star burst blossoms.
My reaction is not to tear my clothes and pull out my hair. I do have lots of clothes but not so much hair. I react more like Asaph in Psalm 73, “But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task until I went into the sanctuary of God.” Though it is great fun as well as frustrating to seek to understand the intricacies of God’s creation, in the end the Teacher in Ecclesiastes has the best advice, “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God.”
Comments