FOUR months ago I attended a gathering of
friends at their home place about thirty miles from
Nashville. The first of June was the prime of spring and
early summer, and the country reminded me of Moses'
description of "the plain of Jordan." Writing nostalgically
from the hot desert sheepwalks of the Sinai Peninsula, he
recorded the picture of the land of his ancestors in terms
he may often have heard his mother quote from her father
Levi, who, spending his last days in the treeless
pasturelands of Goshen, would recount to his posterity the
tales of his youth in Canaan.
From the rim of the Jordan Valley Levi's
great-great-uncle Lot had looked out over "all the plain of
Jordan." Our English word "plain" here misses the flavor of
the word Moses actually used. He said "circle"—"all the
circle of Jordan." From sky to sky stretched out the
mountains and hills that edged the valley, and over them and
the lush lower lands were the green forests and the rolling
vineyards and grainfields of that blessed region. "And Lot
lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that
it was well watered everywhere, .. . even as the garden of
the Lord." Genesis 13:10.
More than forty years later Moses wrote
again, with quivering heartache, of that loved and longed
for land he was to see only afar: "The land, whither ye go
to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh
water of the rain of heaven: a land which the Lord thy God
careth for: the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it,
from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the
year." Deuteronomy 11:11, 21.
I thought of those pastoral pearls from
Moses' pen when on a brilliant June day I, like Lot, lifted
up my eyes and beheld "all the circle" of a middle Tennessee
landscape and found it like "the garden of the Lord."
Everywhere, everywhere a wealth of greenness, from majestic
oaks, maples, and hackberries to the crowding wild shrubbery
and honeysuckled banks of the roads! Patterned between were
splashes of color from ripening wheat fields, fallows
purpled with vetch, or rocky hillsides in the muted magenta
pink of carpets of rockcross. Roadside banks wore ruby
necklaces of the bending bunches of sumac berries.
"0 Lord, how manifold are Thy works! In
wisdom hast Thou made them all: the earth is full of Thy
riches." Psalm 104:24. So is it today, if we look about us.
The son of my hostess, noting my delight in all I was
seeing, told me of the joy his mother and he took in the
wild flowers. One day it had been necessary for them to
search the wilder land beyond the fields for straying
cattle. "We had to walk out anyway," he said, "so we thought
we might as well make it as pleasant as possible." So they
began to count how many flowering plants they could see. By
the time they found the cows, they had also found a few more
than thirty kinds of wild flowers. Becoming excited over the
search, they continued it through the day and by nightfall
had doubled their morning count. God's riches spread out for
our happiness, health, and benefit!
That was last June, and God's riches have
multiplied in this harvest time. Where there was then one
tree, there are now many pounds of rosy fruit. Where there
was one color on the hills, the country now fairly blazes
with flame colors, with the dark green of the unchanging
cedars for contrast. Where last June more birds were singing
than we took time to count, now greater multitudes are
passing through to their winter resorts. God's riches do not
decrease; they multiply into a harvest, whether it be His
riches in the natural world or His great and precious
promises.
