By JIM NICHOLS

An academic colleague of mine has been involved in a multi-year research project in a tall grass prairie area of Oklahoma. In 1999 in a localized area, above ground rusty pipes decayed sufficiently to dump their contents onto the land. This was an oil field and some of the spilled material was oil itself and the other was salt water used in the extraction process. As one might suspect, the oil and salt water killed much of the vegetation in that localized area. My botanist colleague has conducted several years of study on the area observing the naturally occurring recovery events. This is a study investigating one of the foundational natural events considered, especially, by ecologists. That event is termed biologic succession.

An illustration of this process is to understand the sequence of changes in the life forms (plants, animals, and microorganisms) that occurs following some disturbance. Abandoned agricultural fields or open areas produced by forest fires are common examples of such disturbance. In other words, following a forest fire there is a multi-year recovery event that includes changes in the forms of life present as the forest “recovers.” The oil and salt water in my colleague’s prairie study complicate the succession event there because those materials have continued to exist to some extent in the soil. Currently, that prairie has achieved a “wholeness,” but it is a different form of wholeness because of the residuals. Compared to what it used to be like, it is different although whole.

Biologic succession is simply one illustration of the work of God in the world. Recovery and an achievement of a new type of wholeness are not limited to plants, animals, and microorganisms in a prairie or a pond. As humans, the disturbances we face in our lives (small or large) are starting points for our own resurgence and recovery to come to a new and different part of our life. When we have a “forest fire” in our life, that is the starting point for a series of events that will mold us into a person we perhaps could not have imagined earlier. It may not be a comforting thought, but it is a realistic one. In other words, God is a rescuer. When we are brought low, God follows our recovery in such a way as to protect us as we re-grow and exposes to us the new blessings and characteristics of our next wholeness. The new wholeness will still contain imperfections, but it will also still feature God’s care and grace for us.

Scripture mentions the concept of “being perfect” several times, but it seems to me that the references are to God’s ideal. They are not alluding to some description of a past situation or a view of myself and my situation now or in the future. You and I can be “whole” but not necessarily perfect yet.

At the risk of co-opting the concept of biologic succession, I suggest that we are each involved in a process of spiritual and emotional succession. We suffer damage of some sort and then God begins remaking us to be whole again. This involves a series of stages that are difficult to understand as they are occurring but leading to a new degree of wholeness. That position is not perfect because there may well be some future damage ahead, but the “God of Succession” is still operating. God does not leave us alone.

Author Parker Palmer writes often of the Boundary Waters of Northeast Minnesota. In that area near the Canadian border and accessible primarily by canoe, he apparently has spent much time listening to God. He recounts a weather disaster there two decades ago that had winds resulting in millions of trees being downed. He writes the ruin was so severe that he wondered whether he would ever want to return. As he did begin to return, however, he reports how the devastation had stimulated new growth. Slowly, the weather-induced scars were filled in and the once-beautiful area took on a new wholeness.

This seems to be the way God works. A disturbance occurs and it is followed by healing. That should be comforting to us.

Jim Nichols is a retired Abilene Christian University biology professor and current hospice chaplain