George MacDonald, the 19th century writer who C. S. Lewis called his mentor, wrote a great deal about possessions. One of his thoughts that has stuck with me is this one from his wonderful novel What’s Mine’s Mine (edited and purged of some of the heavy Scottish brogue by Michael Phillips and retitled The Highlander’s Last Song): “The true possession of anything is to see and feel in it what God made it for, and the uplifting of the soul by that knowledge is the joy of true having.”

Folks in Western cultures probably consider land they have purchased, settled on, and worked as among their most important possessions. Capitalism, of course, considers private property ownership as its cornerstone. But do we really own land, or are we truly just landholders? Consider this Old Testament Scripture:

KEY SCRIPTURE:
The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants. Throughout the country that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land (Lev. 25:23-24).

As legally encumbered as land is now in the West (for instance, my German ancestors’ farm land “bought” from a priory in 1269) it would be next to impossible for us to return to the biblical ideal implied by Levitical law and God’s prior claim. However, I do think we would be far better stewards of “our land” if we followed these considerations:

1. Being created in God’s image, I have a wonderful capacity to utilize the land for great benefit—for God’s glory, for my needs and those of my family, and for my neighbor in need. Yet I do not truly own the land; it belongs to God, and I am merely the land holder or steward of His property.

2. If I deliberately diminish or destroy the land’s capacity to fulfill God’s purposes as I have come to know them, there is a good possibility I am acting sinfully. One of those purposes is for the land and all that is on it to offer up praise to God. This is done by allowing the land to carry out its own work in maintaining the natural order—the God-created order that guarantees life and health to all the earth’s living creatures.

3. I must recognize that the land is a vital part of a vast and complex ecosystem that keeps all land healthy and productive. If I alter its function and nature without carefully considering its impact on the surrounding ecosystem, I am acting sinfully

4. God expects me to use the land to meet not only the needs of my own family, but also the needs of its other inhabitants and of those who will be its stewards after me when I am gone.

5. I have a responsibility to care for and respect the living things that occupy the land. If I act without considering their needs and purposes, I am acting sinfully. Remaining ignorant of the ecological characteristics and importance of my land to excuse irresponsible behavior is not Christian.

6. I must not knowingly use the land in a manner that deliberately diminishes my neighbor’s landholdings and/or his livelihood.

7. As much as I can control the factors, I have no right to deliberately pollute or degrade the air that passes over the land or the water that passes through or under it.

8. If the previous tenants abused the land, I should consider doing all I can to restore it to its highest purpose for the glory of God.

9. I recognize that no use of the land is 100 percent sustainable, but understanding my responsibility to consider future generations and to avoid wastefulness, I must seek to keep the level of matter and energy loss on the land at a minimum and seek to keep the soil as free of degrading chemicals and other elements as possible.

10. While the idea of the rigidly ritualistic Sabbath seems to apply specifically to Israel in Old Testament times, there is a “Sabbath Principle” that goes back to the Genesis mandates regarding the need to cease work every seventh day—for our personal benefit and the benefit of the land. Land must not be pressed beyond its capacity to remain fruitful.

11. I must never let the land become a god to me. It is not the land I worship, but its Creator. My relationship with the land is brief; my relationship with the Creator is eternal.

These points are taken from a longer article on the WOC site found here.

[Click on the Lancaster County farm photos to see them larger.]

The one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the Word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty, or thirty times what was sown (Matthew 13:23).

By Dr. Paul Brand

My home is near the Olympic National Park and the rain forest that clothes the lower slopes of the western mountains. We love to take our grandchildren to see the wonder of the living forest. Near the Hoh River there is a row of trees in a straight line. Each one of those giant trees seems to be standing astride, with its legs apart. Each trunk is single, but only from maybe 7 feet above ground. At that point it is supported by two huge root systems, like legs, that spread apart and curve down to reach the ground about 7 feet apart, leaving a tunnel between them. If one looks through the tunnel in the first tree, you can see through the other tunnels in the other trees because they are in a straight line.

That clue explains it all. A hundred years ago or more a giant tree fell in the forest. It died, and lay dead and decaying for many years. Seeds, falling from other giant trees, fell into the cracks of the bark and rooted there, using the dead tree as rich soil. All the materials the old tree had collected over the years, and which had formed the basis of its strength and vitality, were now being made available to the young seedlings growing on what we now call a “nurse log.” As the young trees grew, they needed support for their great size, while the dead tree was weakened by decay. So the young trees sent out roots around the old trunk to reach the ground on either side. Those roots gradually became the whole support of the young trees, while the old tree disintegrated and finally disappeared, becoming one with the soil around it.

Our children and grandchildren have stood quietly looking through the space where that old tree lay. We cannot see the tree itself, but we can see the way it has helped to shape and give nourishment to the new generation of giant trees, forming a “colonnade” in memory of the nurse log whose substance continues in them.
[Nurse log photos: by eastpole and by oldmantravels]

I look through that space too, but with a different perspective. My active life is mostly behind me. Soon I will no longer occupy space. But I pray that my life and the principles that God has helped me to live by will continue to influence young lives. When we die we not only leave seed, but we also leave an effect on the soil in which future children grow and future spiritual seed will be nourished. That’s one reason the psalmist says, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints” (Psalm. 116:15).

Good soil is the legacy of pioneer grasses and plants now long gone. It has been said that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it’s the soil of the church. The seed is the living Word of God. I am thankful that I grew up surrounded by a godly family who told me stories of Christian pioneers and martyrs. My heroes were those who had given their lives for Christ and the gospel. Thus when the living seed fell into my heart, the soil was well prepared.

This devotional was written by Dr. Paul Brand, who is now with the Lord-–and who has truly left fertile soil of such depth that it is sure to nourish both his biological and spiritual descendants for generations.  You can find the entire context of this devotional in the Discovery House Publishers book He Satisfies My Soul.  It also appears  in the Discovery Series booklet “Good’s Good Earth,” which can be obtained without cost here.  The wonderful story of Dr. Brand and his wife was also made into a three-part video series that can be viewed online on RBC’s Day of Discovery site here. Also found in the DHP book and the DS booklet is Dr. Brand’s touching story called “A Handful of Mud,” which has appeared in many publications over the years.  This would be a wonderful story to read to children.  It can be found too on this website here.

This story by Dr. Paul Brand has appeared in many publications since the early eighties.  It was the one that first touched my heart and set me on the path as an advocate of creation care—as it has numerous others.  You can read it in its entirety in RBC’s Discovery Series booklet “God’s Good Earth.” And you can watch his story on RBC’s Day of Discovery webpage.  You may recall that Dr. Brand and Philip Yancey collaborated on the book Fearfully and Wonderfully Made. If you’ve never read the story, you are in for a treat.  If you have, it is still a joy to read again.

See you outdoors!

Dean

A Handful of Mud

I grew up in the mountains of South India. My parents were missionaries to the tribal people of the hills, and our lives were about as simple as they could be-and as happy.

There were no roads. (We never saw a wheeled vehicle except on our annual visit to the plains.) There were no stores, no electricity, no plumbing. My sister and I ran barefoot, and we made our own games from the trees, sticks, and stones around us. Our playmates were the Indian boys and girls, and our lives were much the same as theirs.

Rice was an important food for all of us. And since there was no level ground for wet cultivation, it was grown all along the streams that ran down the land’s gentle slopes. These slopes had been patiently terraced hundreds of years before; and now every one was perfectly level, and bordered at its lower margin by an earthen dam covered by grass. Each narrow dam served as a footpath across the line of terraces, with a level field of mud and water six inches below its upper edge and another level terrace two feet below. There were no steep or high drop-offs, so there was little danger of collapse.

Those rice paddies were a rich soup of life. When there was plenty of water there would be a lot of frogs and little fish. Egrets would stalk through the paddy fields on their long legs and enjoy the feast. Kingfishers would swoop down with a flash of color and carry off a fish from under the beak of a heron.

And it was here I learned my first lesson on conservation.

I was playing in the mud of a rice field with a half-dozen other little boys. We were racing to see who would be the first to catch three frogs. It was a wonderful way to get dirty from head to foot in the shortest possible time. Suddenly, we were all scrambling to get out of the paddy. One of the boys had spotted an old man walking across the path toward us. We all knew him as “Tata,” or “Grandpa.” He was the keeper of the dams. He walked slowly, and was stooped over a bit as though he were always looking at the ground. Old age is very much respected in India, and we boys shuffled our feet and waited in silence for what we knew would be a rebuke.

He came over to us and asked us what we were doing. “Catching frogs,” we answered. He stared down at the churned-up mud and flattened young rice plants in the corner where we had been playing. I was expecting him to talk about the rice seedlings we had just spoiled. Instead, the elder stooped down and scooped up a handful of mud. “What is this?” he asked. The biggest boy took the responsibility of answering for us all.

“It’s mud, Tata,” he replied.

“Whose mud is it?” the old man asked.

“It’s your mud, Tata, this is your field.”

Then the old man turned and looked at the nearest of the little channels across the dam. “What do you see there, in that channel?”

“That is water, running over into the lower field.”

For the first time Tata looked angry. “Come with me and I will show you water.” A few steps along the dam he pointed to the next channel, where clear water was running, “That is what water looks like,” he said. Then we came back to our nearest channel, and he said again “Is that water?”

We hung our heads. “No, Tata, that is mud.” The older boy had heard all this before and did not want to prolong the question-and-answer session, so he hurried on. “And the mud from your field is being carried away to the field below, and it will never come back, because mud always runs downhill, never up again. We are sorry, Tata, and we will never do this again.”

Tata was not ready to stop his lesson as quickly as that, however. He went on to tell us that just one handful of mud would grow enough rice for one meal for one person, and it would do it twice every year for years and years into the future. “That mud flowing over the dam has given my family food since before I was born, and before my grandfather was born. It would have given my grandchildren and their grandchildren food forever. Now it will never feed us again. When you see mud in the channels of water, you know that life is flowing away from the mountains.”

The old man walked slowly back across the path, pausing a moment to adjust with his foot the grass clod in our muddy channel so that no more water flowed through it. We were silent and uncomfortable as we went off to find some other place to play. I had experienced a dose of traditional Indian folk education that would remain with me as long as I lived. Soil is life, and every generation is responsible for all generations to come.

The hand of man

I have been back to my childhood home several times. There have been changes. A road now links the hill people with the plains folk, but traditional ways still go on. The terraced paddy fields still hold back the mud. Rice still grows. And the old man the boys call “Tata” is now one of the boys I used to play with 65 years ago. I am sure he lays down the law when he catches someone churning up the mud, and I hope the system holds for years to come. I have seen what happens when it doesn’t.

The Nilgiri hills, or Blue Mountains, were a favorite resort in the hot season for missionaries from the plains. They were steep and thickly forested, with few areas level enough for cultivation, even with terraces. The forestry service allowed no clearing of the trees except where tea, coffee, or fruit trees were to be planted. These bushes and trees, in turn, held the soil-and all was well.

Thirty years after my encounter with “Tata” I was back in India, a doctor and a missionary myself, with a wife and growing family. We began going to the Nilgiris for every summer holiday, and our children reveled in the cool air and lush forests. But something was different, or soon became so.

A new breed of landowners had begun to take possession of the land. These new “farmers”-former political prisoners who, following India’s independence, were given tracts of land-had not farmed before. They had never been exposed to a Tata teaching them the value of mud. They wanted to make money, and make it fast. They knew the climate was ideal for potatoes, and that there was a market for such a crop. Forests were thus cleared on sloping land, and potatoes planted. Two and even three crops could be harvested per year, and money flowed freely into their purse.

But harvesting potatoes involves turning over the soil, and monsoon rains often came before a new crop could hold that soil. Not surprisingly then, as my family and I returned to those mountains of boyhood memory, the water now looked like chocolate syrup. It oozed rather than flowed. We were seeing rivers of mud. I felt sick.

I went over to ask old Mr. Fritschi and his wife, a dear Swiss couple living in Coonoor on the Nilgiri hills, about the havoc that was being wrought and to find out if there was anything we could do. They had been missionaries of the Basel Mission but were long retired and now owned a nursery of young plants and trees. They loved to help and advise farmers and gardeners about ways to improve their crops. It seemed to me that these devoted people would know if there was some way to advise the landowners about ways to save their soil.

Mr. Fritschi’s eyes were moist as he told me, “I have tried, but it is no use. They have no love of the land, only of money. They are making a lot of money, and they do not worry about the loss of soil, because they think it is away in the future, and they will have money to buy more.” Besides, he continued, they can deduct the loss of land from their income tax as business depreciation.

Thirty more years have passed and we have left India. But every year I go back to visit Vellore Christian Medical College and take part in the leprosy work there. I do not, however, enjoy going back to the Nilgiri hills. I look up to those slopes and see large areas of bare rock of no use to anybody. Those deforested areas that still have some soil look like gravel. And the clear streams and springs that ran off from these areas 60 years earlier are dry to day. When the rains come they rush in torrents and flood, then they go dry.

Oh Tata! Where have you gone? You have been replaced by businessmen and accountants who have degrees in commerce and who know how to manipulate tax laws. You have been replaced by farmers who know about pesticides and chemical fertilizers, but who care nothing about leaving soil for their great-grandchildren.

NOTE:  Dr. Brand would be delighted to know that with a great deal of effort and time, the Nilgiris are being reclaimed.  Though the paddies are gone, the hills are now filled with tea plantations.

Before I took on the job of “professional blogger” with WOC, I served as an associate producer with RBC’s Day of Discovery television.  During my time with DOD I had the neat opportunity to help in the production of two TV series on the wonder of creation.  The first was a four-part series on the wonder of a tree, done in 2002.  This required video shoots in the Pacific Northwest and then in Lebanon, where I had the unforgettable experience of visiting with our crew one of the oldest groves of the biblically “famous” cedars near the summit of Mt. Lebanon.

The second was a three-part series on the wonder of soil that aired just last month on the three Sundays leading up to Thanksgiving.  The timing of those broadcasts was ideal— my considering Thanksgiving to be the true Christian “Earth Day.”

Now you have the opportunity to watch both of those series online—right where you now sit!  Each program is about 25 minutes long. If you do watch any of them, I’d love to have you tell me what you think.

See you outdoors!

Dean

The Wonder of a Tree:

http://www.rbc.org/radio-tv/day-of-discovery/2002/09/29/program.aspx

http://www.rbc.org/radio-tv/day-of-discovery/2002/10/06/program.aspx

http://www.rbc.org/radio-tv/day-of-discovery/2002/10/13/program.aspx

http://www.rbc.org/radio-tv/day-of-discovery/2002/10/20/program.aspx

The Wonder of Soil:

http://www.rbc.org/radio-tv/day-of-discovery/2008/11/09/program.aspx

http://www.rbc.org/radio-tv/day-of-discovery/2008/11/16/program.aspx

http://www.rbc.org/radio-tv/day-of-discovery/2008/11/23/program.aspx