Estimated reading time: 7 minute(s)
Recently, I was fascinated by poop.
(Yes, you read that correctly.)
Actually, it started in a public outhouse-style “restroom”. If you’ve never used an outhouse, or a “port-a-potty”, it’s just a big container collecting all the liquid and solid waste, rather than flushing it away down a nice, convenient pipe—out of sight, out of mind.
(And, if you’ve never used a toilet that doesn’t flush… well… that is also fascinating!)
At first, I was grossed out. And rightly so, I believe. It’s gross. I really don’t even like using public bathrooms with plumbing, let alone the variety that collects all of the waste for you to view while you’re adding your own.
But a secondary thought (thankfully) crossed my mind before I left.
Wow, what if we didn’t have toilets that flushed? We’d just have to find some place for all this gross stuff… but then… it does make really good fertilizer. Hmm…
And then I remembered that we use various animal waste products as fertilizers, to enhance the soil and to grow better food. (That’s oversimplified, but generally true.)
God is so full of life that even the waste from his living creations produces more life!
That is both amazing, and completely understandable.
Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.1
Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life… 2
For in him we live and move and exist.3
Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation, for through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see—such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world. Everything was created through him and for him. He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together.4
It’s obvious that the One who could, by a simple command, give life to all that is would be abundantly full of life itself. And that life being so fantastically complex that we’re still trying to understand it. We’re even looking for—and even finding—signs of it on other nearby planets, created by this Giver of Life.
That the waste generated by the Life he has breathed into his creation would also produce life is indeed astounding, and yet, it is as it should be.
God is life. Life beyond our wildest imagination. And he has breathed that same life into you and me.
Incredible.
Oh, the things you learn from a pile of poo!