“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Romans 5:1 ESV
Finding God Amongst the Lima Beans
I think I have always felt at Peace with God. I grew up surrounded by love and intimately connected to the natural world. God was fully present in it all. Indeed, I once wrote a story about finding God in my lima bean patch. Perhaps some further explanation would be helpful. I raised lima beans for sale as a middle schooler—half an acre to be exact. I spent endless hours alone tending endless beans. My mother was hospitalized several times during those years, and I was often frightened she would die. I prayed, pleaded, and bargained while I planted, weeded, picked, and hulled my precious beans. God came every day and slowly I found peace. The lima bean fields are long gone, and the endless hours covered over by a busy life. Mom lived another 70 years. But, the God I got to know in that field still comes. I still seek peace with myself. I try to listen and align my life to the me God created rather than the others I have sought to emulate. I know how to talk about all this, but my practices leave much to be desired. God still shows up; too often I don’t, or I’m too distracted when I do. I’m working on that—fortunately God is patient. The isolation of Covid-19 has enforced a slower pace reminiscent of my lima bean days. My quest now is to do something that has previously eluded me—to empty myself of me so there is some room for the God who comes to enter fully.
A prayer:
In Each Moment
Oh, teach me in each moment
of every Now to know that
You are the Here in all my
wandering and the Yes in
all my wondering and the Love
in nothing less than everything.
(Mesiter Eckhart’s Book of the Heart, by Jon M. Sweeney and Mark S. Burrows)