God Saw That it Was Good

And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.  And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 

Genesis 1:11-12

In our Sunday School class, we're going through the Book of Genesis.  It is such an interesting study.  Eleven verses into the book, God caused the earth to sprout vegetation.  Remarkable!  In addition to creating plants and making them grow, He created a system in which plants would create its seed so that it would produce more of the same type of vegetation year after year.  He later enlisted the birds of the sky to help spread the seed and honeybees to pollinate.  So intricate.  The interdependencies and synergy.  I often wonder what the Garden of Eden looked like.  Prior to the introduction of sin and the curse that fell on the land, it must have been a sight to behold.

Thousands of years have passed, but if you're in the garden, you can still catch glimpses of God and His ordered plan.  I want to show you an example today.  This morning it was early.  The sun was not positioned high enough in the sky yet to begin to shine at an angle to touch the garden with direct light.  I was out on one of the garden rows looking at the broccoli and the tiny pearls of dew that covered the leaves.  At intervals, a breeze would blow pushing one dewdrop into a few others and the resulting weight of the dewdrop would roll down the leaf and onto the ground beneath the broccoli.  In a few short hours, the dew would all be burned off.

This row of broccoli has already been harvested one time.  By that, I mean that the big head of broccoli has been picked quite a while ago.  What you see below are the little florets of broccoli that come out all over the plant.

These florets must be picked every other day, especially as it warms up.  They grow so quickly!  What you are witnessing is God's plan enacted in Genesis 1:11 where he directed vegetation to make seed after its kind.  The broccoli, since the main head has been harvested, is working overtime to ensure that seed is dispersed to give the next generation of broccoli a chance to grow.

Those little florets will turn very quickly into a gazillion yellow flowers.  The honeybees will visit the flowers and do their thing.  Those flowers will eventually produce seeds in little pods.  Once the pods are dried, you can winnow them and save the seeds for next year, since these are non-hybrid seeds.  They produce SO many little black seeds.  I have lots of broccoli seeds saved and some purchased in envelopes, so we'll not save any this year.

Instead, we'll continue to pick florets every other day.  We eat a bunch fresh, but with these in this basket, we blanched them, quickly chilled them and put them in ziploc bags in the freezer.  This basket made two quart-sized bags full of blanched broccoli.  We'll enjoy that later.

If you look at about the "3 o'clock position" in the basket below, you can see a floret or two with flowers JUST ABOUT to open.  These were picked at the last possible moment!

God's handiwork in action in the garden.  Just like in that first garden so many years ago.  As I was thinking about propagation in the plant family, I was thinking about God's directive to Man to "be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it..."  I read that in 2021 the average woman in the U.S. gave birth for the first time at 27.3 years of age.  The average family in the U.S. has 1.94 kids.  As a society, we aren't exactly being fruitful and multiplying anymore.  We had 3 kids and Tricia and I often think about it wish that we would have had more children.  Obviously we are happy with the kids God blessed us with.

Behold, children are a gift of the LORD; The fruit of the womb is a reward.  Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one's youth.  Psalm 127: 3-4

 When God looked at His creation, God saw that it was good.  In Genesis 1:31 He saw all that He had made and behold, it was VERY good.