Dear Fellow Suburbanites,

In the Greater Boston area we’ve experienced our second-wettest July on record, with over 9-1/2 inches of total rainfall during the month.  All of that liquid sunshine has made for lush lawns in the yards around town.  If mowing the lawn isn’t your favorite activity, you can blame the 19^th-century Europeans.  Until the 1800’s people let their grass grow long, accentuating it with wildflowers.  But when lawn games like golf and bowling became popular, manicured lawns became a must.  There was also a security advantage, for short grass made it easier to see who was approaching your home.

Centuries ago, unless you had a flock of sheep to eat your grass, you had to cut it with a scythe.  But in the 1820’s Edwin Budding invented the rotary push mower.  It was almost another hundred years before another Edwin—Edwin George—took the motor from his wife’s washing machine and attached it to the back of his mower, making the first gas-powered version.

And that topsoil that your grass grows in?  It takes 500 to 600 years for just a one-inch layer of it to accumulate from clay, sand, and the decomposed remains of plants and animals.  Although it may not feel like it when you’re cutting the grass in the summer heat, your lawn is really an impressive creation of God which you have been given the privilege of managing.

Now, if you failed to manage it, ignoring it completely, your lawn would eventually decay, die, and compost into dirt.  Then the rain would wash away the dirt and the wind would blow away the dust.  The Bible says, “The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.” (Isaiah 40:8) It wouldn’t make much sense to spend countless hours tending, nourishing, cultivating, and manicuring your lawn while letting your inner spirit dry up and wither, would it?

Join with us any Sunday that you’re in town this summer as we feed on the Word of God at 10:00 A.M. worship^*.

Trust me.  The lawn will wait.

Yours for green pastures,

(Rev.) Peter A. Brown
^*Background information and devotional idea from Actual Factuals by Nancy S. Hill, © 1997, Tyndale House publishers, Inc., Wheaton, IL  60189, pp. 199-121.

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