I ran across a story once about a farmer who was celebrated for growing award-winning sweet corn. Every August he entered his corn in the county fair, and every year it won a blue ribbon.
One summer a newspaper reporter came to interview him. In their conversation, he discovered that each spring this farmer generously shared his seed corn with his neighbors. So then he asked the obvious question, “Why share your valuable seed in the spring when your own neighbors are entering their corn in competition with yours in the fall?”
“Well,” the farmer said, “You’re from the city, aren’t you? You see, the wind picks up the pollen from the corn plants and swirls it from the field to field. If my neighbors grow inferior corn, the cross-pollination will degrade the quality of my own field. In order to grow the best corn I can, I have to help my neighbors grow the best corn they can.”
This attitude is a beautiful reminder for living an abundant life in relationship with God and neighbor. If we want to live well, it’s up to us to help our neighbor live well. If we want to live in peace, it’s up to us to help our adversary live in peace. If we want to be treated with dignity, it’s up to us to treat those who’ve been cast aside with respect.
Our lives are interconnected with every human being alive on this beautifully diverse planet, regardless of their ethnicity, religion, refugee status, gender identity, or attitude toward lutefisk. God inspires us to live in relationship with others because God exists in relationship with God’s self.
When God created humankind out of the dust of the earth, God spoke in the plural. It is this mysterious and unknowable bond of Father, Son, and Spirit that imagines forms, and inspires us. When we peer into the stillness of our favorite lake and see our reflection, we see this face of Trinity reflected in our own.
In doing so, we sense the presence of God’s imagination. We feel the wonder of God’s relentless love. We experience the power of God’s radical forgiveness. We come to understand that we are formed in the very image of our creator, who uses dust from ancient stars to craft the DNA that carries our own unique genetic code.
This God who created all that is, both seen and unseen, became a human being with all of the emotions, yearnings, frustrations, sorrows, aches, and pains that we all share in. Then, out of love for this fractured world, God even shared in our death.
When Jesus was dead and buried, and it seemed as if this world would simply go on as it always had, the stone was rolled away, and everything about our relationship with God and neighbor was transformed.
Jesus is the image of God that brings healing to those so burdened that life seems unbearable. Jesus is the image of God that lifts up all whom we have marginalized. Jesus is the image of God who sweeps the powerful aside and gathers in those whom we declare unworthy.
In response to this unrelenting love, we are compelled to center ourselves in a faith that reaches out and interconnects, interrelates, and intersects with the global community that surrounds us, so that no one falls through the cracks or goes to bed at night unloved or unforgiven.
Those who worship in Lutsen or down the shore in Finland hear my favorite corny kids’ story once each year. It goes like this. A kindergarten teacher was watching her classroom of children as they were drawing pictures. As she walked past a young girl who was working feverishly on her picture, she bent down to ask what it was. The little girl replied, “I’m drawing God.” The teacher frowned and said, “But dear, you know that no one knows what God looks like.” Without looking up, the girl replied, “Well … they will in a minute!”
We are invited to imagine what God’s presence looks like here on the shore, and then make that presence visible for everyone to see. We are summoned to envision how God lives in relationship with us, and then go out and model that relationship with those who are searching for God’s presence in their lives. We are bidden to live in loving relationship with family, friend, and adversary alike, so that all God’s children might experience just how much God loves and values them, too.
Like pollen from sweet corn drifting on the wind, our reflection of the Trinity brings peace, dignity, love, and forgiveness into even the darkest corners of this troubled world.
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month’s contributor is Tom Murray of the Lutsen Lutheran Church and Baptism River Community Church of Finland.
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