Is Grass Smarter Than people?

Just this Saturday my wife and I finished a long road trip. As we traveled I recognized something interesting about all the plants. No matter where I went, all the plants raced desperately to produce seeds. And all this made me wonder, is grass smarter than people?

I believe God wrote an endless amount of truth into his creation, and through this trip, I recognized a new truth that we can learn from grass.

The Urgency

As the heat of summer comes, most small plants race to finish producing their seeds before the sun scorches the life out of them. They aren’t waiting around, they aren’t focusing on self-preservation. Instead, they focus on producing fruit before their inevitable fate arrives.

I recently learned something important about tulips. If you don’t cut off the pods that develop after the flower petals fall away, then the tulip will devote most of its energy to producing seeds rather than storing that energy for the next year. As a result, the next year they don’t have the energy to bloom.

Talk about self-sacrifice. These plants give up their own radiance for the sake of producing more fruit.

I also learned that if you cut off the flowers of a spinach plant, they’ll double down on the energy they focus toward developing more flowers. This way they can produce the flowers as quickly as possible before it’s too late.

Look everywhere, whether it be plants or animals. All of the living organisms God made urgently work toward producing fruit. Bull elk fight each other to multiply, birds chirp and dance every day, and salmon let their bodies die just to produce a new generation of their kind.

God has hardwired it into his creation the urgency to reproduce. Just imagine what this world would be like if plants and animals didn’t really care about producing fruit? Mammals wouldn’t roam the hazardous mountains for weeks searching for a mate. Plant’s would just focus on growing and soaking in the sun.

Then, they’d all die off.

What About Us?

What if this were our goal?

I’m not talking about having children, but producing spiritual fruit: seeing the lost come to saving faith in Christ.

We know our lives here on this Earth are headed to an inevitable end, but we ignore that and seek out self-gratification.

As Christians, we know we have eternity with God, but yet we still let ourselves get distracted.

We focus on doing what we want, having fun, building wealth, and relaxing when people are dying all around us without a relationship with God. Why are we so self-focused?

Is Grass Smarter Than People?

Are we so distracted that we don’t see our inevitable fate? Or are we too stupid to recognize the cold, hard truth that we are going to die and all we work toward—outside of pursuing God and his great commission—will come to nothing?

Imagine a firefighter who’s too focused building his dream cabin that he fails to recognize the forest fire racing right toward him. Not only does he fail to protect the forest and save the lives around him, he also loses his own life and all he worked towards.

As absurd as that scenario is, this is exactly what we do.

Grass is smart enough to see that its life is short. It recognizes that there’s no point in growing taller if it’s just going to die. Grass is more than willing to stop growing and instead use its resources to produce new seeds and bring about new life.

Are We Disobeying Jesus?

Aren’t we smarter than grass?

Then how is it that we forget Christ’s most urgent command Christians in Matthew 28:18-20 to “go and make disciples of all nations”?

We see the urgency in producing fruit all around us. Why is it so hard for us to do what God has hardwired into all of Creation?

If we aren’t sharing our faith, we are disobeying Jesus. As a Christian or Christ-follower, this is your calling and duty. And how could we not join God in such wonderful work?

This is how we live wilder.

 

What about you? How do you take active steps to be faithful in sharing your faith in Christ? What are some other instances where nature exemplifies this truth?

 

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If you don’t know how to share your faith, then check out my blog: Four Ways to Share the Gospel During a Quarantine

If you enjoyed this lesson from nature, I’d encourage you to check out my post: Nature is Disturbing