I started to dig up another patch of flower garden yesterday. It’s not the sort of thing I find pleasurable. My wife enjoyed the garden. I guess I still do it to please her. Some people find relaxation and pleasure in gardening. I find it to be rather ill-disguised work, although I do enjoy the finished project. I should imagine I would enjoy being the lord of some grand manor with a squad of gardeners I could direct here and there. Though I don’t believe you can call a plot of ground your garden until you put a piece of yourself in it.
When you dig up a spot of ground only a small part of the shovel actually touches the dirt. Just a few inches to be exact. In reality, every molecule of the shovel, the dirt, the handle and the shoveler too are engaged in the task. To take that thought one step further, the orange juice you had for breakfast provided the energy you needed for the task. And the history of that energy can be traced to the grocery and the wholesaler, to the orange grove, to the tree itself, to the sun that gave the tree life, and ultimately to the Creator.
When you carry wood for your fireplace, or write a letter to a friend, or plant a tree or paint a park bench; that act is only part of a long chain of interrelated events. In everything we do we are tied to each other. The self-made man does not exist. No one is truly self-sufficient. Even our thoughts are influenced by the thoughts and deeds of others.
Everything we do sends out ripples that touch someone else. A boy in Wisconsin is healthier because he eats fruit packed in California or Florida. A middle-aged man from New Orleans is saved by a brain surgeon trained at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota.
Sometimes this relatedness causes grief. A bartender in Washington D.C. pours one drink too many for a man from Virginia who drives his car into a vacationing family from Michigan. A sea captain runs an oil tanker aground in Alaska and the effects are felt all over the nation. We can never know how many lives will be affected by our most casual actions.
St. Paul must have felt some of this anxiety when he realized that Christians were being arrested in Ephesus and Rome because they had in their possession a cross or perhaps even copies of his letters. To these Christians in Rome he writes: “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him…” And again, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” Our lives are tied not only to each other but also to the heart of God. The simplest act of charity is rooted in the overwhelming love of God. God has the ability to work through us in ways we could never imagine. We see only the tip of the shovel as it turns over the earth at our feet. We may plant while someone else waters, but it is God that makes it grow.
WHK