A Question Of Faith

"Thought I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders."

Henry David Thoreau

I was watching TV yesterday when I heard someone say: "What's the first thing that comes to mind when I ask, what do you have faith in?" Most people would have immediately answered with something like God, their family, their church, their friends, etc. What sprang to my mind immediately, without even giving it a thought, was "nature." It's not that I don't have faith in my family or those other things I mentioned. It's just that for every single day of my life, without fail, nature has shown up and done what I expected it to do. After 72 years of that kind of commitment, how could I not have faith in nature?

Nature never makes a promise it can't keep. It never promises things that don't make any sense. It never tells you in January that, if you don't like the cold and snow, it will give you sunshine and 70 degrees. It never mixes up the seasons; winter, spring, summer, fall, repeat. You can count on nature. As Thoreau mentioned above, if we plant a seed in the spring, and do everything that Mother Nature would do if she had planted it - like water it, feed it, give it sunshine - the seed will produce something wonderful. 

Now, I'm sure there are those of you out there who will say, "but what about things like storms, floods, earthquakes, droughts, etc?" Well, what about them? When certain weather conditions come together in a certain way, these things will happen. Something to seriously consider, however, is how much of it comes from what we humans have done to the planet? From the greenhouse gases, from cutting down trees and depleting forests, to poisoning the soil, and watching the good topsoil be reduced to nothing? How do we blame nature for reacting to what we have done to it? 

This morning it was 10 degrees when I woke up, which was actually a blessing after the -11 degrees I woke up to the other day. Listening to folks complaining about the cold, the first thing that comes to mind is: "hey, people, it's January. Unless you live in Australia, it's winter. In winter, cold will happen." It's not like nature lied to them or anything. Two months from now, I have faith that I will start to see the first tiny green shoots on the trees, and the earth begin it's march to spring. I have faith that, even with snow on the ground and 10 degrees on the thermometer, spring will come again. If I have faith in anything, it is that spring, indeed, will come again.

And so it is.