Desolation and Consolation

My youngest son is a sophomore in high school. He is studying Biology this year. Part of his study involves observing plants. About a month ago he had to run an experiment with some beans. He was given 18 beans and two cups. He was instructed to fill two cups with potting soil and to place 3 beans in one cup and 15 beans in another cup. He had to make a hypothesis about what he thought would happen. His best guess was that the cup with fewer beans would thrive while the other cup would be too crowded and not flourish.

He watered the plants and watched them as they began to grow. To our surprise, the cup with fewer beans struggled, while the crowded cup flourished. In the cup with 3 beans at first, only one sprouted, eventually about 2 weeks into the experiment a second bean sprouted, but the third bean never did. However, in the cup with 15 beans, all of the beans sprouted from the start. Likely, if he were to run this experiment a few times with a variety of beans the results would be different, but in this case, it turned out unexpectedly.

I told my sister about this experiment and she replied, “I like the idea of thinking about the beans thriving because they were part of a community.”

Community can be beautiful and it can be heartbreaking. It can be holy and it can be harrowing. Jon Tyson writes, “The scars on my soul come from the church, as does the joy that has come to define me. Leading in the church has been the source of both the trauma and the consolations in my life.” These words resonate with me deeply. Sometimes hurt and healing come from the same community and other times healing comes from a different community. But community always plays a part.

We’ll never know why the beans in the less crowded cup didn’t flourish, but it’s nice to think that the beans in the other cup might have thrived because they were in a healthy community.

Can you remember a time when healing came through community?

~ Melissa