I love being out in nature, exploring creation.
There are so many interesting things to see, different smells, textures, colours. In the summer is generally the time when people explore nature the most.
One thing I really like about nature are the lessons that nature teaches us. And for those you don’t have to travel three hours north, or find a secluded island or lake. A lot of nature’s lessons can be found right in your own back yard.
Due to an illness that I suffered this spring, our backyard garden fell behind. One evening once I was home from the hospital my wife finally had time to go out and try to work up a couple of the garden beds for planting. It was into June by now and we felt that there was an urgency to needing to get the job done.
The beds were hard, and hard to work. My wife spent a few hours trying to force the soil apart with her assortment of garden tools. In the end that evening she got one bed done, through a lot of hard work.
That night it rained. It wasn’t supposed to rain, but it did. The next day she got the last three beds done in the same amount of time as it took her to do the first one.
Nature, creation, has its own clock, has its own timing. In our heads we needed to get the job done that first night so my wife fought and worked hard, even when it was obvious that it wasn’t going well.
That rain and the work of the next day reminded us that things happen when they are supposed to. We can try to force things through but generally speaking that doesn’t go as smoothly or work as well as when we allow things to naturally run their course.
If we had the mindset of “well this isn’t working today, lets just wait and try again” it would have saved a lot of strain and a lot of work.
But because we were thinking it had to get done “right away” we pushed through and made it harder than it needed to be.
What I have learned this summer is that our bodies (which are a part of this wonderful creation) are no different. We need to listen to them and the signs, clues that they are giving us.
Our bodies let us know when things aren’t working; they give us signs that say, “maybe today isn’t the day to be pushing through the hard dirt.”
But how often do we listen to them? Do we listen to the clues that are being given to us that we need rest, or that this just isn’t the right time? Or do we ignore those signs and just keep going because that is what we have been trained to do?
What I have found is that if we do the latter too much, our bodies will at one time just say this is enough and force us to take a break whether we want to or not.
Listen to nature, listen to creation, listen to what your body is telling you for everything happens in its own time.
For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.
– By Mark Laird, DM Drayton United Church