Creation

I often wake up early and cannot go back to sleep. It is during these times that ideas come to mind. Sometimes they are poems, other times they are stories, and other times they are insights into things. The other day, while trying to go back to sleep, the following story came to mind.

One day a priest looked out of his window and noticed a stranger sitting on a bench in his garden. He went out and asked the man what he was doing there. The man said that if the priest would come and sit with him for a while he would tell him. So the priest went over and sat down next to the man. The man began to ask questions about the church's garden, which the priest was all too happy to answer since he loved his garden. They discussed all the different types of flowers, what worked and didn't work with each variety, and the arranging of them for the most aethetic affect. As they talked, the priest came to realize that this man had a garden very similar to the church's.

Finally, after a long while, the priest asked the man again why he was there. The man told the priest that he was there so that he could be surrounded by God's creation. The priest was confused. He asked the man if his own garden was not similar to the church's, to which the man replied yes. So the priest asked him why he had not just gone out into his own garden to sit. The man said that there was one thing that the church's garden had that his didn't, and that made all the difference. The priest asked him what that was. The man looked into the priest's eyes, grinned just a little and replied, "You."

All to often we forget that we, too, are part of God's creation. We forget that on the second coming of Christ, not only we but all of creation will be redemed. God placed us here to be stewards of creation, not to worship it nor to destoy it. The native Americans have a saying which is so true. They say, " We do not inherit the world from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children." I just pray that we can reclaim this position and prove ourselves worthy of such an awesome responsibility.