where waves grow sweet

Having taken a break this semester from the Bible study I was attending on Wednesday nights, Chase was missing his boy-only nights with John to watch Star Wars shows and eat ice cream. So one evening last week, I gave them some space and tucked myself away in my room to fold clothes and watch a movie I’d been putting off for a long while… The Biggest Little Farm.

If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend it. Actually, you might want to go watch it before I give anything away… and then come back. It is about a couple, John and Molly Chester, and their dog, Todd, who move from a small apartment in the city to a barren 200 acre farm in the country, which they hope to turn into an organic biodiverse farm, thriving in harmony with nature. No big deal, right? Fortunately, they have a mentor to teach them the principles of regenerative farming and help them accomplish this task.

It takes months of stripping back elements that aren’t benefiting the land and putting necessary systems in place, at no small cost, before they can even begin planting trees and introducing animals. With their patience at last rewarded, it is thrilling to see things beginning to take shape with new life and all the hope and promise it holds. But for every bit of encouraging progress, there seems to be a discouraging setback, if not several.

One such duo of obstacles sticks out. A severe drought is preventing the flushing of duck droppings in the pond, leading to an algae bloom that is killing off life in the pond and posing a threat to the ducks themselves. “Another problem created by us,” John bluntly states. At the same time, a plague of snails descends upon the citrus grove, devouring leaves and directly thwarting the production of fruit. With their commitment to organic farming, pesticides are out, and their small army of helpers is no match for thousands upon thousands of snails. It is just at this time that Allan, their beloved mentor with a vision and a plan, passes away from an aggressive form of cancer. “This is overwhelming,” Molly laments.

It would accomplish nothing to complain about the setbacks, to ignore them or to wish them away. Instead, for every problem that arises, John learns to first step back and watch it. “Observation followed by creativity,” he says, “is becoming our greatest ally.” It isn’t too long until he figures out what ducks love even more than ponds: Snails. So the whole flock of ducks is moved to the orchard where they lay waste to the snails, consuming over 90,000 of them in a single season. Better yet, the droppings that were polluting the pond become life-giving fertilizer for the trees. The pond comes back to life and the citrus grove thrives as a result.

There are far too many spiritual lessons here to tackle in one blog post, but this story really tracks with what I am learning about life in God’s Kingdom: Problems and hardships aren’t meant to take something from us, but to impart something even better than we had before their arrival. They are the fertilizer that will cause our lives to thrive, which is probably why the Bible says to consider it pure joy when they come.

I’m sure that’s a stretch for most of us, but what if we take a note from John and Molly when problems arise? What if, instead of getting stuck in the futility of complaint, denial or envy, we step back and honestly observe what is going on? What if we lay our obstacles with all of their fallout and implications on the table and look at them without judgment? And throw all our known resources on there too? Here is where I depart from the story because we have a very living mentor in the Holy Spirit with the vision and plan to help us take the leap from observation to creativity… from problem to solution… from discouragement to joy. In walking out this process each time we face hard things, resilience, hope and wholeness will continue to grow and before you know it, we will have lives as beautiful and redemptive as Apricot Lane Farms.

_{Photo credit: Apricot Lane Farms}