VIEW from behind the plow -

There’s something about a tilled field that appeals to our sense of the aesthetic.

Maybe, it’s the result of having grown up on a farm where tillage work took up a major part of “summer vacation” from school.

We understand that there are advantages to no-till and lo-till farming methods. For instance, we’ve heard that no-till operators were able to get harvest equipment on their fields after last spring’s rains quicker than those who followed traditional tillage practices.

But there’s just something that seems appropriate to us about turning over all the weeds and grass in a field with a plow as opposed to burning them down with chemicals.

A recently-tilled field has a certain beauty in our mind – an organization or a pattern.

We’ve noticed this effect especially from the air while flying over farming country.

Of course, when the planted crops emerge – whether in tilled or no-till fields – we see the same pleasing geometrical design.

The Miracle of The Seed

The germination and development of the seed into a living thing that in its turn produces more seeds, or fruit, oil or whatever its kind provides – seems a miracle that replicates itself year after year, eon after eon.

This miracle, in our mind, refutes the theory of evolution, which was posited by a 19th century scientist, Charles Darwin, that agnostics and atheists used in efforts to try to prove that an all-powerful, all knowing omnipresent God does not exist.

Spring is often seen as the season of new beginnings.

In an agricultural area such as ours, the fall-seeded grain fields also provide another season of new beginnings.

Watching the new plants grow and develop first into forage for livestock (in this area of the country, at least) and then into grain for food provides a sense of achievement and contentment in contrast to the downward spiral of violence, corruption and conflict that dominates the world scene.

Crops Provide Other Important Benefits

It seems significant that crops produce other benefits for people and other living creatures, providing a healthful balance of oxygen in the air that enables us to breathe, maintaining a comfortable humidity as well as providing a beauty that artists cannot match.

And to think that it all starts with a tiny, dry piece of matter that contains a mysterious and wonderful genetic code that – with just the addition of sunlight, water and nutrients occurring in the soil – will turn into plants that produce so much that is good.

An author, who happens to be Moslem, Harun Yahya, writes in a book the following lines:

“[W]ithin the seed is concealed a superior intelligence and comprehensive knowledge that, of course, do not belong to the seed itself. It cannot be claimed that the atoms and molecules of the materials that make up the seed are intelligent and knowledgeable, so this knowledge must be inserted into the seed somehow. But who inserted it?

“When thinking through these steps, one arrives at some very important truths. The seed, dry and seemingly lifeless, is capable of doing nothing of its own accord. This knowledge has been implanted in seeds by a far greater unrivaled power, who is God. God creates seeds with the knowledge and system to develop into plants. Each seed cast on the ground is enveloped in God’s knowledge, with which it germinates and grows.”

We get the same feeling of awe, each time we see a new baby – whether human or bird or animal – when it arrives so perfectly made.

It seems there are miracles all around us daily disguised cleverly as tiny seeds.

They are in every terrain – from deserts to oceans – and come to life when conditions are right for them to germinate and grow.

A reference to the miracle of seeds appears early in the Christian Bible.

Genesis 1:29 says:

“Then God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you.’”