Out Of the Compost Heap

Posted on April 6, 2018

By Linda Rex

This morning I was researching information on the Nashville Metro government website about brush pickup and recycling. I came across an interesting document on composting.

I’m quite familiar with composting. My mom and dad were quite religious about having a compost pile in the backyard to use with their organic gardening projects. They were gifted at taking a desert or wilderness and turning it into a garden. Part of the process involved taking what most people throw in the trash and using it to fertilize their plants through the process of composting.

Their companions in this process were worms of various types. The article I was reading told about a way I could create a home for red worms, who would in return for this privilege decompose my kitchen scraps. Worms are amazing creatures—they take what is decomposing and turn it into valuable elements for the soil, so new things can grow.

It seems we as humans avoid death and dying, and decomposition, as much as possible. We fear death—creating whole industries in an effort to avoid or delay the decomposition and decay of our bodies, even though this is the natural process of our physical form. We have an inherent desire to live and to endure.

What’s interesting is that we are drawn toward health and healing, toward wellness, while at the same time we live and make choices in ways which actually hasten the destruction of our bodies. We are a mess of complications, and we struggle in various ways to be sound of mind, body, and emotions.

The same is often true of our inner selves. The inner drive of our being is to live—to experience the fullness of life in this body—to really know another and to be truly known and loved. And we seek it in a variety of ways—in our experiences, in our relationships, in our indulgences, and in the goals we strive toward. We may do things we know probably aren’t wise just because we are driven by this inner longing.

In all our seeking of life, we may find ourselves held captive by those things we have hoped would bring us life and happiness. It seems death always finds a way of creeping in and ruining our hopes and dreams, and the pleasures of this life.

If death and dying, and decomposition, are a natural part of our human existence, perhaps we should reconsider how we approach our life. The Bible tells us our God, who is Father, Son, and Spirit, made all things including us as human beings out of nothing. And we had the opportunity to share in their existence by eating of the tree of life, but we chose to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God told Adam our choice (and I say ours, because we all invariably make this choice in our natural humanity) leads to death.

Death, rather than life, became the governing force in our cosmos. All things eventually come to an end and begin decomposing into the more basic elements of the universe, to become part of something new. The miracle is in the becoming something new—for apart from the sustaining hand of God himself, the cosmos would return to the nothingness from which it came.

God did not want all things to return to nothing—he made something very good and wanted it to remain and flourish. God did what needed to be done, for only God can bring to life what is dead and dying. Only God can make something out of nothing.

So, God took on our broken and dying humanity—he came into our existence to live as we live, and to die our death, experiencing the worst of human depravity in the process. This death Jesus went through on our behalf was for a purpose—to raise us, and all that he had made, up into new life.

Before we can have new life, there has to be an ending of the old life. Jesus described this in John 12:24-25: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal.” Just as in Jesus our old way of being died on the cross and was buried, so in Jesus our new life rose and walked out of the tomb. We have new life in our Lord Jesus Christ, but we need to embrace it and live it out.

Death is never the end now. Decomposition is merely the next step in our broken human existence after we die. But Christ has done what the little red worm could only do as a shadow of his perfection—he has taken our death and turned it into life. He has made all things new. There is a new life awaiting on the other side of death. Death is not our enemy, nor is it something to be feared. Now it is only a gateway to glory—as we trust in Christ and what he has done and will do for us in our place and on our behalf.

Perhaps we need to think of those things in our life we need to be freed from as items to be placed on the compost pile. We need to toss out our old ways of thinking and acting, putting them on the pile, and allowing Christ to eliminate, renew, and restore as needed. They died with him and are really of no use to us anymore except to keep us in the stranglehold of death.

As we participate in Christ’s death, dying to old habits and ways of thinking, we make room for God to bring new life, healing, and wholeness. We will begin to see new life sprout up in us and all around us as we become more aware of and sensitive to the work of the Spirit in our lives, as he brings the risen Lord Jesus Christ to full expression within us. May we respond to God’s work—the work of the Divine Composter—as he finishes his perfect work in us through Jesus and by his Spirit.

Abba, thank you for your faithful, tender care as you work in us what you began before the cosmos was. Finish your work to heal, transform, and renew all things—and grant us the grace to respond fully and freely to you as you work out in us your salvation, through Jesus and by your precious Spirit. Amen.

“Behold, I will bring to it health and healing, and I will heal them; and I will reveal to them an abundance of peace and truth. I will restore the fortunes of Judah and the fortunes of Israel and will rebuild them as they were at first. I will cleanse them from all their iniquity by which they have sinned against Me, and I will pardon all their iniquities by which they have sinned against Me and by which they have transgressed against Me. It will be to Me a name of joy, praise and glory before all the nations of the earth which will hear of all the good that I do for them, and they will fear and tremble because of all the good and all the peace that I make for it.” Jeremiah 33:6-9 NASB