After only nine days the first Moringa seed has passed from death to life; having been buried beneath the earth for a time, he bursts forth from the hanging hands of the earth, rising victorious so that others may live.
He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
Although the parallels abound, I might be stretching a bit. Still, the first seed has germinated and is growing rapidly.
All joking aside, there is much to be learned from what nature is saying here.
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world."
Here in the states we, especially us who have been around the academic setting for a while, have been indoctrinated with the triumphalism of 19-20th century materialism. Although the upper echelon of both particle and astro-physics are showing an increasingly complex, fantastic, and multi-dimensional world, our programmed default is to look a the "simple" processes of nature and not have Wonder. We have this intellectual pride that we not only understand, but can control nature, as if it is a machine. This just isn't the case. The attitude that said "God is Dead, we don't need him anymore, our poking and prodding has almost exhausted nature of it's wonder and glory" is itself dead. Physicists are now postulating at least 11 different dimensions... at least. Wonder is there to be had, if we can shake ourselves loose of our culture.
The basic germination of a seed shows us how fantastic this world is because it shows how God has set in place this order that if we put a sleeping pod the ground, it will grow. We don't make it grow, we just provide certain conditions. If those conditions are met, a stalk shoots up and begins to thicken, leaves sprout out and multiply, and eventually something massive and completely other than that simple seed exists. We can look on, observe and attempt to understand, but something far greater than we can perceive, or catalogue happens; a miracle happens, Life happens. Although we partake in it, are around it, and study it, life still escapes our understanding. It continues, and will always continue to have, as Lewis puts it, "divine, magical, terrifying, and ecstatic" properties about it that can only lead to wonder and praise. Life is not our thing, it's God's, and it should continue to push us towards Him.
Don't ever lose your sense of wonder for the world. A necessary part of the renewal of our minds is to more comprehensively understand ourselves in the context of this sweeping, epic, fantastical, story that God is writing. There are no normal trees, and there are definitely no normal people. If we can learn not to treat either as just normal, and we can regain our wonder and perspective, then God will be able to speak to us in ways we've never imagined.
Experiment: Take the time today to stare at a tree, and praise God for all that we don't and can't understand about it. Don't analyze it, just listen, and see what it says to you. Can trees speak? You tell me.