Life Is A Fight, But Then . . .

Life on earth is a fight. There are three things about life on earth that we must battle continually: gravity, ecological succession, and human nature. Gravity stoops, creases and sags our bodies; succession erases our efforts for tidy yards and gardens; and human nature degrades our best efforts to live at peace with each other. Heaven is eternal release from all three.

Whatever humans erect or lift up, gravity will eventually bring down--be it a satallite or a house. If it weren't for gravity we could run a marathon and not feel winded. Gravity is why plastic surgeons get paid so well for lifting and tucking the bodies of wealthy, vain ladies. It is to take a break from gravity that we sit down to rest and lay down flat to sleep. When we breath our last we will be lying down with only the earth's surface holding us up. That will be the end of our fight with gravity.

Then there is succession. Back in the 1940's, my grandmother used to keep a formal garden at her 11-acre estate in eastern Mississippi. It was the English-type garden with intricate designs made from manicured boxwood hedges. By the time I was in high school in the 1970's, it was smothered under the local native vegetation. It was located to the left of the driveway near the top of the hill. If you didn't know any better, you would drive by and never guess a formal garden was ever there. All you can see now is a tangle of native grape vines and fallen branches with native trees growing up through it all.

My grandparents loved to travel in their car. Everywhere they visited, they collected a few rocks to remember that place. After many years of this, they used the rocks to build a beautiful waterfall next to their patio. They regularly had friends and their "supper club" visiting on the patio and admiring the water as it cascaded down all those interesting rocks from all those interesting places from all over North America. Today, the ivy and other vegetation has grown thickly over the rocks and--just like the English garden--no one would ever guess what once was there. Now it looks just like the wild brambles at the edge of the field.

I must admit that the thought of this is somewhat discouraging to me as I pull the weeds in my garden beds. A friend of ours who, as far as I know, has no formal training in the science of ecology put it well. She said, "I'm tired of trying to hold back the Ozarks." That's layman's talk for ecological succession.

Before someone cleared my pasture (probably many decades ago), it was Eastern Deciduous Forest--oak, hickory, black gum, red maple, sycamore, dogwood, etc. As long as I brush hog it with my tractor two or three times each year, it remains a tall fescue pasture. But if I hold off for even a few months, I see the blackberries coming in, and the buck brush, and the ash trees. These are all early-succession woody plants in the Ozarks. As they fill the space, they change the conditions so that red maples and other trees come in, until finally it is a deciduous forest again.

So, everytime I pull weeds in my garden or mow my lawn or brush hog my pasture, I am trying to "hold back the Ozarks". I can show you a whole host of tree species growing as volunteer seedlings in the cracks of the vast parking lot of your local shopping mall. In fact, the more artificial we try to keep the land, the more effort it takes to keep it that way--be it a formal landscape or a soybean field. Left alone, ecological succession will inexoribly lead--like gravity--to where it "wants" to go. It's like keeping a heavy ball up in the air trying not to let it touch the ground. That's our fight with succession.

Ahh . . . and then there is human nature! Possibly the strongest force we have to contend with. Human nature makes me selfish, and prideful, and impatient, and worrisome, and demanding, and . . . miserable. It causes me to let other people down and get purturbed at me. It makes me to forever want more things and to be discontent with what is. On the other hand, the Bible says that the Spirit of God empowers us to see these kinds of qualities in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Because human nature is so strong, experiencing these "fruits of the Spirit" is almost like defying gravity. It ain't natural. It's a miracle of God when we experience it in ourselves. But someday, it will be the norm, the routine. In heaven, there are no wars, no lawsuits, no arguments, no jealous rages, no revenge. Like gravity and succession, the fight with human nature will be over.

Perhaps there is one more fight to consider. Perhaps I should add: time. Time gets away from us and stresses us and ages us. We say that “time is of the essence” and “time is money”. Time is the currency used by the other enemies—gravity, succession, and human nature. Given enough time, all three will undo us. But heaven is eternal because God’s nature is eternal and transcends time. The Bible says that, to God, a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day—both are true at the same instant. So time has no meaning or relevance in the context of heaven. Heaven is a release from time, and from everything else that wears us down or binds us up. Look forward to it! And make your arrangements . . .