GRASS is an odd subject for December
reading. Yet life on the whole globe in December is
dependent on it. Grass was the first organic life God
created. Thus food was provided before the animals and man
were created.
So grass feeds the world. Wheat, corn,
oats, barley, rice, and rye are grasses. Another group of
grasses furnish sugar and all its by-products. Still other
grasses furnish all manner of mechanical products, also
medicines, oils, and clothing. Grasses are the source of
"... man's bread and meat, Many things good, and most things
sweet."
Among all the products of grass I am
thinking of bread in December. A friend has just brought me
a gift loaf of her homemade bread, warm from the oven; and
its fragrance fills the room. The warmth, the gladness, the
joy of summer fields are in that aroma. In memory rise the
beautiful hills whose ridges God watered abundantly, whose
furrows He settled, whose soil He made soft by His showers,
whose springing He blessed. The little hills rejoice on
every side. "The valleys also are covered over with corn;
they shout for joy, they also sing." Psalm 65:9-13.
This singing of the grass is no figment
of the poet's fancy. The rustling of the corn is musical. It
is instinct with life. Hardheaded farmers in the "corn belt"
insist that on still, hot nights there is a murmur of life
in their fields; one can hear the corn grow. What hymns of
praise we might hear if our ears now had the range of
audition of our sinless first parents!
God's love is written on every springing
blade of grass. But through no grasses does He manifest His
love more than through the cereal grasses-the source of
bread. Man's lawlessness is fast obliterating the image of
God in the human soul; modern society is swiftly becoming
paganized. Men worship science; but they selfishly and
ignorantly destroy the natural resources of the soil until
today they are literally destroying the earth, and
ultimately God must destroy them. (Revelation 11:18.) But
until the day of doom arrives, God still promises grass.
"While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold
and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not
cease." Genesis 8:22.
On every hand the omens increase that the
day of reckoning is approaching. One of them is modern
commercial baking. My fragrant gift would not be so unusual
if all men had lived on the land as God planned. And if
those who are on the land had managed the soil as God taught
ancient Israel, it would not now be so depleted of vitamins
that malnutrition is prevalent in the midst of abundant
eating. The course of the Israelites, described in Leviticus
26, is symbolic of the course of the world hastening to its
end. Verse twenty-six suggests modern commercial baking of
devitalized bread: "And when I have broken the staff of your
bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they
shall deliver you your bread again by weight: and ye shall
eat, and not be satisfied."
Come, Lord Jesus, and bring the new
earth.
