The Grace of Erosion--July 13, 2020

The Grace of Erosion--July 13, 2020

"You visit the earth and water it,

   you greatly enrich it;

 the river of God is full of water;

   you provide the people with grain,

   for so you have prepared it.

You water its furrows abundantly,

   settling its ridges,

softening it with showers,

   and blessing its growth."  [Psalm 65:9-10]

The same rain that make the wheat, corn, and hay grow tall in the fields also erodes the exposed ridges of the earth as well.  Curious, isn't it?  The same water powers both the raising up of green plants (which in turn allow other living creatures to thrive as well, as sources of our oxygen and nutrition), and the wearing down of the land at the same time.

I used to think that these were opposites, the nourishing role and the eroding force of the rain.  I used to think that the poet here in the psalm is just giving us a sort of "on the one hand, here's a good thing that rain does... and on the other hand, here's a bad thing that rain does," kind of statement.  Almost like saying, "Well, we have to take the good with the bad, so let's focus on how God's gift of rain helps fill our fields and barns and bellies, not how it wears down the ridges of the earth."  But maybe both are good gifts in the end.

Maybe erosion is a gift of grace as well--I just hadn't thought of it that way.

Notice the way the poet puts it: God "softens" the ground with showers, which "blesses its growth."  I had never really thought about it that way, but that softening of the earth is indeed a gift.  You've seen what happens to ground that gets too parched--it cracks and breaks with fissures, and the earth itself seems to become brittle. Get a heavy rain onto terrain that is too dry to take it in, and it just channels the water into a flood rather than absorbing it to nourish life. Like the old Jon Foreman lyric puts it, "The thirstiest grounds can't take the rain."  In other words, even if the proud earth doesn't like it, the ground needs to be worn down and softened by the rain. The rain's erosion prevents little ruts from becoming big gullies.  The slow and gradual watering of the ground smooths out jagged edges into rolling hills. That is as much a gift as the crops that grow because of the rain, too.

And maybe it is true for each of us as well.   Maybe each of us is like a bare patch of earth in which God is planting something.  And while we may like the things God does to feed, strengthen, and nurture us, I'll bet we don't like the ways God wears down our rough edges and smooths out our jagged edges.  But we need it.  All of us.

I need more than just God's provision of food and water and shelter for my daily needs; I need God to wear down the places that are sharp and brittle.  I need God to erode away where there are steep drop-offs in this heart of mine.  And I need God to smooth out the places in me that are still rough and difficult.  Honestly, I don't just need that for my own sake, but for the sake of everyone else who has to live in a world that has me in it.  When God wears down the brittle places, the hostile places, the self-centered places, and the bitter, grudge-holding places, that makes me into the sort of person others can bear to be around.  

And that makes me realize that we are really good in our prayer lives at asking God for stuff on our wish-lists. We are not so good at inviting God to wear away our jagged edges--largely, I think, because we don't want to admit we have them.  We have a way of assuming in our prayer lives that what we need will always look like "more"--more money, more status, more success, more social life, more vacation, more perks at work, and so on.  But maybe sometimes what I am really in need of is to become "less."  Maybe what I need is for God to wear away the places that are sharp with smug self-centeredness or arrogant self-absorption.  Maybe what I need is for God to erode the shortness of temper in me that doesn't want to take the time to listen to someone else I disagree with, because it seems so much easier to turn them into a stereotype.  Maybe when I need is for God to keep sending the rain, not just to fill me up, but to smooth out the roughness in me. And maybe at the end of that shower, I will have had some of my old self worn down... and yet will feel more fully myself than I was before.

So today, perhaps my prayer needs to be to invite God's creative touch to shape me in new ways I've been afraid to ask for before.  Maybe, like a craftsman sanding down a project in the wood shop, God makes me more fully what I am meant to be, not by adding more and more and more "stuff" into my life, but in fact by wearing down what is jagged in me, so that I can be more fully alive, and more fully a reflection of Christ.

Thank God for the rain--not only for how it makes the corn grow, but for how it softens the earth and smooths the ground as well.  Thank God for the grace of erosion.

Lord God, give us what we need... and wear away in us all that is hindering us from being a reflection of your presence in the wilderness.