Monthly Archives: November 2014

A Sod Story

God is love

I. Laid. Sod.

Yup, all by myself. This girl, right here. I did a good job, too! My husband could not get over how great it looked…oh he of little faith. ;)

And then I went on summer vacation…In Houston, Texas…With a broken sprinkler system…For 2 weeks. Upon my return, I found mostly dry, yellow straw where my gorgeous, green grass used to live.  Needless to say, I was heartbroken.  I had been defeated.  Consequently, I surrendered my efforts and gave up on my once-beautiful (and nearly-professional!) lawn job.  My grass had stopped growing, but my indifference was sprouting up like a weed!

I no longer cared for my sod.  I stopped watering it even though I knew that I might have been able to save it with just a little love. But, I refused to love it.  I stopped checking on it all together.  I even went so far as avoid that part of the yard.  It’s not that I was angry or upset with the sod, I mean come on, it is just sod.  The reality was that I just didn’t care anymore.  I destroyed what was left of my sod by separating it from myself.  It had died because I had stopped loving it.  I didn’t “do” anything to destroy it, I just stopped caring for it.  My indifference caused it’s destruction.

You see, you don’t have to hate something to destroy it.  The opposite of love is not hate…  It’s indifference!  Love creates, but indifference destroys.  A simple and often justified attitude of indifference can bring unintentional consequences into our lives.  I didn’t kill the sod by hating it…  I killed it by no longer caring for it.

Love is an action.  Love is a verb.  It creates and sustains, that’s what love does.

1 John 4:8 tells us that, “The one who does not love, does not know God, for God is love.” 

God is not indifferent. God is love!  Love must create and God is the creator of the universe.  He created us and He sustains out of His love.  The fact that we exist is simply an expression of God’s greatest moral attribute… Love!

This is why you and I were made, as an expression of God’s love, because if God is love and love must create, then God must create.  Saint Theresa of Avila said, in her work Way of Perfection, “The primary purpose of creation is that God wishes to bestow love and teach love, so that creatures can share in the blessedness of divine life, of loving and being loved.”

Isn’t that an awesome concept?  God had to create us.  He didn’t have a choice!  God is love and love must create… Wow!  God wants us to know Him and experience His love.  He desires to have a personal, intimate and loving relationship with us.  Through our personal relationships with Him, He uses us as the primary agents, so that, through us, His love might be carried to others.  This is why it is so important that we not let indifference and complacency take root in our lives.  We must weed it out!  Our love should always be in motion, always doing, always creating.  The same way that my indifference destroyed my sod, our indifference towards God can destroy our lives and rob our joy.  If we are not actively imitating God’s love then we are not in fellowship with Him.  If we are not in fellowship with Him, We… Will… Die!  It’s that simple.  But, God is love, He is not indifferent and He wants us to prosper spiritually while on this earth.  Ultimately, He created us so that one day we might live in eternal fellowship with Him in Heaven.  God’s Word assures us of His promise…

Isaiah 40:8 says, “The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of our God endures forever.

Guest Blogger Ali Martin