Botany

I'm not sure people know it exists. And I kind of like that about it. So, I’m hesitant to make this place publicly known. But my third favorite place in Jacksonville (feel free to speculate about #1 and #2) is the Arboretum.

It contains a lake (the best kind of body of water). And a creek (which is the river family, which is the second best kind of body of water. Sorry oceans). And green deciduous trees (the second best kind of trees to Autumn-y-colored deciduous trees).

It’s pretty great.

Last time I was there, I took a path to the most secluded part of the park and discovered a sign describing the area in front of me as a “depression marsh”, which just sounds discouraging. I’m a guy who took “History of Science” and “Gems: The Science Behind the Sparkle!” for his college science credits, so take my botanical musings with a grain of salt, but here’s the basic idea of a depression marsh.

When certain types of soil, clay, and sand gather in one area sometimes it will create a wetlands environment where standing water begins to collect in the center. Water plants will begin to grow in that area followed by successive rings of gradually more arid-loving (that’s the technical term) plants going out from the center. So, water plants followed by grasses followed by woodier bushes (often thistles and thorns), and finally the outer ring will be made up of pine trees.

I ought to add this. While depression marshes occur naturally, this particular marsh was impacted by titanium mining that took place on that spot in the mid-twentieth century where the use of man-made heavy machinery has changed the makeup of the area.

A marsh is very similar to a lake (the best kind of body of water) so I found a bench and sat by the water for awhile. While I was there I started reading a few passages from the Bible aloud and eventually came to Isaiah 55, one of my favorites.

In this chapter, God gives a tremendous invitation, promising to freely and graciously welcome the hungry, the thirsty, the wicked, and the frustrated. Further, He discusses His greatness and holiness above humankind along with His promise to sovereignly work all things so that what He wills will be accomplished.

All these ideas and promises have been extremely powerful to me in the practical and the theoretical, so I was greatly enjoying reading this divine poem and then I got to the last verse, which had never been that powerful to me in the past. It reads:

Instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree,
    and instead of briers, the myrtle will grow.
This will be for Yahweh’s renown,
    for an everlasting sign,
    which will not be destroyed.

Here I was looking at this marsh surrounded by thornbushes. A marsh that had been run over and dug up and industrialized by man.

And here Isaiah 55 was playing out. 

The pine trees in their ring were moving in and overtaking the thornbush. God’s creation and the way He designed nature was undoing man’s work of stripping the earth. It was healing itself. And in doing so, it was pointing forward to the promise that one day the whole earth will indeed be healed.

The next passage I turned to was Revelation 21-22 where direct echoes of Isaiah 55 are found, where now in eternity future, God once again puts forth His invitation, using a loud voice to declare, 

“I am making everything new! It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty, I will give the drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.”

The same God who is redeeming and restoring the depression marsh promises that he will one day completely redeem and restore the entire earth.

This is just a foretaste.

He has ordered nature to give hints. He has ordered our hearts with a sense of oughtness, a feeling the world is not as it ought to be, and a sense that it should be restored. He has given us a longing for Eden.

And better yet, He promises to restore it all! From the marsh to the thornbush to the pine tree. The social, the physical, the psychological, the spiritual, and the systemic. All things, great and small, all that is corrupted will be set right!