'Speak to the earth and it will teach you'

NATURE AS 'WIRELESS TELEGRAPH STATIONS'

The patriarch Job wrote 'speak to the earth, and it will teach you'. (Job 12:8 NIV)

'George Washington Carver is considered one of history's greatest scientific minds. Around the turn of the twentieth century, agriculture in the southern states of America was suffering. The boll weevil was destroying cotton crops. And the soil was being emptied of nutrients because farmers planted cotton year after year. It was George Washington Carver who pioneered the idea of crop rotation. He urged farmers to plant peanuts, and they did.

The plan revived the soil, but farmers were upset because there was no market for peanuts. Their plentiful peanut crops decayed in warehouses. When they grumbled to Carver, he did what he had always done - he prayed; he regularly got up at 4am, walked across the woods, and asked God to disclose the mysteries of nature to him. One of his favourite Scriptures was 'speak to the earth, and it will teach you'. Carver literally asked God to reveal the secrets of nature, and God did.

As a result, Carver discovered more than three hundred uses for the peanut. Or perhaps more accurately, the Lord revealed more than three hundred uses. They comprised everything from shaving cream to glue to cosmetics to soap to sauces to insecticide to linoleum to wood stains and to fertiliser. Carver said, "I love to think of nature as wireless telegraph stations through which God speaks to us every day, every hour, and every moment of our lives." Today God will speak to you in many different ways; you just have to be sensitive and listen.'

(The above reflection is from UCB's Word for Today by Debbie Glass).