Earlier today my friend Gary Fawver, longtime Christian camping advocate, instructor, and consultant, sent me this testimony from a man in his church.  I pray it will bless you like it blessed me:

Good morning. My name is David Brown, or in some places known as “Farmer Brown.” My wife, Nancy, “Mrs. Farmer Brown,” and I operate Mustard Seed Farms, an organic vegetable farm across the Willamette river in Saint Paul. We raise 20 different kinds of vegetables, such as lettuce, cauliflower, squash, and onions on 65 acres of land. Within those kinds of vegetables we grow many varieties of them. I think there are over 140 lines of text on our seed order list!

In this great diversity of crops is the where I see God’s work. From time to time in recent years the thought has come to me that my livelihood is based on putting seeds in the soil and they grow to produce an edible product! From tiny seeds such as lettuce, carrots, or cabbage through multiple seeds in one unit like beets and chard to large seeds for giant pumpkins, there is life that develops under the right conditions for each one. That is amazing!  Of course Jesus says that in Mark 4:26 & 27: “A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.”

As much as we can, we provide the right temperatures for germination. Lettuce germination rate drops way down above 80 degrees but cucumbers will still germinate above 95 degrees. They then need good soil to grow in, with adequate nutrients, along with the right temperatures over its lifetime. This year, as many of you may know, has been a cool one, which not only delayed crop maturities, but caused some crops to not set fruit in normal fashion.

Two lessons here: First, we need to know the conditions God designed a plant to grow in and give it that environment as much as possible. The second is that we trust God for the weather we need for the crops and adjust to what he gives us, like we have this year.

At harvest you see the diversity of God’s creation. Think about the unique forms of the vegetables you eat. Leaves of lettuce or greens. Tubers like potatoes or beets or bulbs of onions. Flowers like broccoli or cauliflower. Fruit like squash or tomatoes. Each one has its own taste, nutritional composition, handling needs, and preparation. God planned all of this for our good!

I need wisdom from God in making decisions to grow all these crops. This starts with the winter planning process, as I make decisions on how much of each type of crop to plant. This continues throughout the year as I adjust schedules to weather, etc. When I remember, I say a quick prayer for direction in what to say or do. I am amazed to see how God answers with direction.

Another great blessing that God gives us from our work is the appreciation from others. Many, including some of you, express appreciation for the beauty of our farm as you drive by. I thank you for your kind words. That encourages us to keep working.  Many times you don’t know how God is using you to bless others. Ten days ago we got an unexpected email from a woman we do not know that brought tears to our eyes and was an emotional and physical boost to Nancy and me as we were very tired doing our evening office work. Let me share some of it with you.

“Hello, I wanted to say this on a real card, but reality is that I keep never getting around to it. I finally looked you up on the internet.

“I just wanted to say…how very much your garden of flowers out front with the rows of corn and berries has blessed me in the past two years.

I come from a gardening family. My grandmother grew the nicest garden in the county in Gales Creek. I grew up with bare feet in the soft tilled dirt, planting along side her, weeding on hot summer mornings with lemonade afterward. I did inherit the love of a garden… and the knowledge of the hard work and love and toil it takes to produce, and the taste buds to know store bought can never compare, and loving memories tied to gardening that I will never lose.

I drive past your farm every morning and evening on my way to and from work. I have a very stressful job that never seems to have “completed” tasks, just more emergencies before the last ones are even resolved. My life often seems frenzied and there is not enough time to even breathe some days.

I wanted you to know that the seconds it takes me to pass your garden every morning are some of the most treasured seconds of my day. I can’t help but feel blessed by not only its’ color and beauty but also by remembered love and a simpler life, and things I can’t even put my finger on. It is my moment to “stop and smell the roses”, to refill my soul. And I can’t help but just say “thank you, God, for this blessing” every day.

I am sure that in your own ways you must sometimes feel like your hard work never ends. I just wanted to let you know it blesses more people than you will ever know. I for one can’t wait to come around that corner every fall morning and see that garden, and be overwhelmed by the sentiments and beauty and the knowledge that God puts flowers in our lives even when we don’t have the time to plant them ourselves.

I’ve often wondered if the name “Mustard Seed Farms” comes from the biblical “having the faith of a mustard seed.”  That too is a blessing when I see your sign.  Anyway, I hope somehow knowing that you are blessing me, is a blessing to you also.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for blessing my life with your garden.”

Reminder: RBC’s Day of Discovery TV broadcast has a three-part series on “The Wonder of Soil” that you can view online here or by clicking on the title on the right sidebar.

See you outdoors!

Dean

In my last post on plants of the Bible I mentioned that some years ago collectors threatened a number of Israel’s wildflowers by picking, pressing, and laminating them to make bookmarks.  But when I was traveling there as an associate producer with Day of Discovery, I too became a collector—the right way: with a camera.  And once digital photography became available, Mart DeHaan, RBC’s president also became an avid collector.  Below are some wildflowers I photographed—plus a shot of Mart doing his “collecting”:

[Israel wildflowers website]

Mart shooting fennel blooms on Mt. Gilboa

Poppy in Gethsemene by Golden Gate

Wildflowers in the Shepherds' Fields

Flax on Mt. Gilboa

Field of mustard above Galilee

Cyclamen on Mt. Carmel

"Wallflowers" in Gethsemene

Redbud-like blossoms in Old Jerusalem

See you outdoors!

Dean

When I was a kid, perhaps around 1950, my folks received a couple gifts from Scottish evangelist Gavin Hamilton who stayed with us when he came to speak at our small-town Baptist church: A KJV Bible with an olive wood cover and a bookmark decorated with dried and laminated Holy Land wildflowers.  He bought them on one of his trips to Israel—like thousands of Holy Land visitors still do.  Except that the bookmarks are now made up of pictures of wildflowers or significant plants mentioned in the Bible!  The nation’s wildflowers were being decimated by collectors.

Since that time, however, I’ve been fascinated with the natural history of the Holy Land—flowers, trees, birds, animals, and its geology.  So it was a great joy for me to have the opportunity to travel with RBC to Israel in 1997—my first trip.  Later when I joined the staff of Day of Discovery I was privileged to visit many more times.  The first time I went with a DOD crew, I pestered our guide, Jane, with constant questions about this or that plant.  Fortunately, Jane was also a volunteer at the Botanical Gardens of Jerusalem and could provide most of the answers. (Unfortunately the website of the gardens is pretty sad.)

Later when I was doing research at home I discovered many fascinating facts about the plants in Israel and the nations around it.  For instance, there is a sage plant (salvia; see photo above) that is shaped exactly like the Hebrew menorah.  Some have suggested that it was used as the model for the lampstand made for the tabernacle, but the design elements of it were actually spelled out by Jehovah, and the only natural forms mentioned were almond buds and blossoms.

For me gaining knowledge of the plants of the Bible has enriched my understanding of the Scriptures and increased my pleasure in reading them.  When natural elements of the lands of the Bible are mentioned, I now have a clear picture in my mind to accompany the words: mustard, broom, hyssop, olive and acacia trees, cedar, and so forth.

Dean in cedar of Lebanon

There is a great resource on the Internet that I use often that you might appreciate as well: Lytton Musselman’s Bible Plants site on the Old Dominion University website.  Lytton is a good friend of RBC and was the host of the final Day of Discovery program on the wonder of a tree. On his site you can usually find several pictures of each plant listed along with an in-depth commentary with Scripture references by Lytton.  Some of this commentary and many of his photos are also part of his informative reference book:  Figs, Dates, Laurel, and Myrrh: Plants of the Bible and the Quran. I keep it near my Bible since there is still a lot I’d like to learn about the plants of the Bible.

See you outdoors!

Dean

Twenty years ago this month I unofficially entered the creation-care community when, with the help of friends and family, I founded the Christian Nature Federation.  At a future date I’ll write a bit more about that three-year adventure.  It was an adventure with an aim that many ultimately said was good, right, and essential—but about ten years too soon.  The evangelical community was not ready for it, they said.

It’s my hope and prayer that it is ready now—a hope and prayer shared by many friends, old and new, who met at Judson University in Elgin, Illinois, late last week—in what is still unofficially called the “Creation Care Consultation.”  This was its third meeting, and a great deal was accomplished.  One of the chief accomplishments to me was articulated by Dr. Cal DeWitt, an evangelical professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.  I like to refer to Cal as the dean of the creation-care movement—having been emphasizing good earthkeeping since the time of Francis Schaeffer.  Cal did a wonderful job summarizing what many of us felt at the end of the consultation, and I’d like to share it with the WOC readers in order that you may be encouraged by the spirit of this meeting and what that could mean for the future of this movement—a movement I see as a recovery of a lost fundamental of the historic Christian faith, and one that is moving to the front burner rapidly:

Dr. Cal DeWitt

In building the movement called Creation Care, we have had to meet two great needs, and both have been increasingly met over our thirty years of development: First, was the need to build a creation theology, and more specifically a creation-care theology. This had to be rooted in a thorough and scholarly biblical theology. Most importantly, it also had to be coherent with an integrated scientific understanding of the biosphere and the world.  We have gone a long way in meeting this need.

Second, was the need to find ways to put this evangelical creation-care theology into practice.  This is what we are doing here in this meeting and in the various organizations we serve.

The work of the gospel, by definition, is the work of self-giving and service.  It is self-giving Good News for all creation.  It is praying that God’s will be done on earth.  And it is working to image God’s love for the world.  What our movement also has found is that it is difficult in our day to bring the gospel beyond our selves and our families into our wider communities and even more difficult to bring the gospel to all creation.  We confess that we find it challenging, in the words of Scripture, to bring good news for all creation.  And we pray that we increasingly will be enabled to do this.

We also confess that it is difficult both to gain power and influence through the creation care organizations we administer and develop—and simultaneously serve in Christ-like humility. Ours is the problem of coupling our positions of power and influence with the need to be humble servants.  This, of course, is why Jesus is such a great model for the evangelical creation care movement. Jesus did not control by organizational hierarchy or by corporate power. Christ’s control came through the hearts of people who received His message of passion, compassion, love, and care, and all of these reside at the core of creation care. Temptations to grasp for power were overcome by the passion for caring—caring for each other and for the whole creation. The sometime attempts at human “grasp” were overcome by God’s “gift.”

The Lord’s beatitude, “The meek shall inherit the earth,” raised an important question for our movement: How does one make progress when meekness is the quality and behavior we seek? Our work in creation care is attempting the difficult work of doing just that—to achieve power and influence, and yet do so through meekness.

In our work together, and in the organizations we serve, we commit ourselves to contribute toward building our own story of responsible stewardship—a story we pray will prove to be a continuing story of the power of meekness, love, and care.

See you outdoors!

Dean

Almost annually since 1991 I’ve made one or two treks “up north” to the Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies northeast of Kalkaska, Michigan.  Last week was my first time this year.  Perched on a wooded hillside above Louie’s Pond, the institute has been providing environmental education for some fifty years—first as a youth camp, later as a boys’ science camp, and after 1980 as a provider of college-level courses.

Au Sable’s primary mission is to supplement the curricula of Christian colleges that typically do not have enough students to support the teaching of various specialized subjects.  So students from colleges all over the country can take these often hard to find courses at Au Sable in a short May session or two longer summer sessions and receive academic credit at their own college or university.  Here’s just a sampling of courses offered this academic year: winter stream ecology, conservation biology, environmental chemistry, and watershed stewardship. Even if they can obtain a similar course on their college campus, a number of students will take their classes at Au Sable because of small class size, the availability of field studies, and the accessibility of their professors.  It’s a wonderful place—a place that has made a life-changing difference in the lives of most of those who have taken classes there.

Of course, as a former college instructor and adjunct professor, I enjoy visiting Au Sable when the students are present.  It’s always an encouragement to me to see the enthusiasm and dedication of both the students and the visiting professors—many of whom hold respected professorships in major universities in the United States and Canada.  The students would be the first to tell you that although they are housed in a beautiful setting, the courses they’re taking definitely are not what we used to call “crip courses.”

The value of the education they receive is reflected in the fact that many Au Sable students have gone on to become college professors themselves.  One of those students, Garrett Crow, has in fact come full circle.  As a student at Taylor University in 1963, he came to Au Sable Trails in the summer where he taught outdoor education to the boy campers.  He went on to gain his PhD. at Michigan State University and had a long and successful professorship at the University of New Hampshire, from which he recently retired.  This summer finds him back at Au Sable guiding graduate students in directed research projects.

The philosophy of the Au Sable Institute is one that I give a hearty “amen” to:

The board, faculty, and staff confess that God is exclusive owner of all and that human beings are trustees of that over which they have responsibility.  The task and responsibility of human beings is that of stewardship; stewardship is the responsible care and use of the Creation and all its creatures.  Stewards of the Creation must have ecological awareness and knowledge.  They must know and understand the interrelationships between living creatures and their environments.  They must know the nature and impacts of its use by human beings.  Stewards of the Creation must have knowledge and skills for acting responsibly in the sustaining, renewing, and preserving of the Creation and its rich diversity.

Also take a look at the more comprehensive overview of this philosophy found in “The Au Sable Idea.”

See you outdoors!

Dean