Life lessons
The road to our house is surrounded by plots of land where neighbors grow their vegetables and fruit. It brings me joy every time to see this. The beautiful banana trees with their majestic leaves, the sugar cane, the evergreen mango trees and so on. Sometimes the fields are in a wild, weedy state and you wonder what will become of them. Until the owner (or usually the owner, because it is often the women who work in the fields) removes all the weeds and plows the earth. The beautiful deep red earth appears again and, in my opinion, looks expectant, waiting for the rain, but also for the sun. And above all, waiting for the fruit deep in the earth, to die and then come back to life and bring new harvest. When you see the first green shoots of the corn plants appear above the earth again.
Good soil gives life force: the grain grows and fully blooms. Before the seed can bear fruit, it will have to go into the ground, so that it can eventually bear fruit. When we sometimes experience difficult things, experience deep sadness, worry, see death up close, we can sometimes wonder why we have to experience this, why there is so much pain and sadness. Sometimes when we have gone through a difficult period, we only see the fruits that it has brought. Maybe things have changed for the better in your life, in your marriage, in your friendships. Or has your faith deepened, grown, taken root?
A while ago I drove past a piece of land where many banana trees grew. I always think it is a beautiful piece of land, a mango tree, banana trees, sugar cane, it all grows together. But suddenly they had cleared almost the entire field, many (also young) banana trees had been felled and chopped into pieces. It looked a bit dreary, to be honest. It surprised me and, to be honest, I didn’t understand it. Why would you do that? I drove past it several times and kept wondering about it. Until I drove by with Elijah and asked him. Only then did I understand it. It was so overgrown with all the banana trees that the new shoots had no place and not enough sunlight to grow properly and produce a good harvest. And even though I understood that at the time, I still thought it looked sad.
However, it didn’t take long until all new banana trees started growing. Less than two weeks later, the first shoots emerged again from the felled stumps. It taught me that even though the field looked so dead and a bit sad, new life was still growing. And in this way, the banana trees that are now small shoots will hopefully bear a beautiful bunch of bananas in 1.5-2 years.
Death does not have the last word, but Life! Something we may (and must) continue to remember in a world full of darkness, death and destruction. God has a plan for our lives.