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Do you love the smell of fresh-cut grass, as I do? Did you know there’s a connection between that smell and the word aftermath? Have you ever thought about the meaning of that word? It’s a simple compound of two very common words – after and math, and it’s usually associated with that period following a major event, and most often a disastrous one. But why does it mean what it does? I looked it up. The math in aftermath comes from an Old English word that means mowing. So it literally means “after mowing.” I normally write about things in God’s creation that testify of Him, but how we interact with all those things is equally instructive. Think of all the lessons taught in sacred writ from farming, vine dressing and shepherding. Today’s post will be about mowing and what comes after.
I love to mow. I have a push mower and it takes me about an hour to mow my lawn. It is a mindless, undistracted hour when my thoughts are not constrained by other matters and I can think about what I want, or listen to music as I saunter back and forth. And I even get about 2 miles of steps in while I do it! But mostly I love it because of the resultant yard. Few things are as satisfying to me as a lawn right after a “haircut.” The unruly tufts are manicured and returned to ordered comeliness, the perfect lines establishing my dominion once again. And then there’s that smell…. That wondrous smell of fresh-cut grass that floats upon the warmer breezes and congers up a host of pleasant memories. Why do we love it so much?
I googled the query and found a wealth of varying answers. Most involved some evolutionary explanation as to why our leafy friends emits an odor so appealing to our noses. Some declared this scent was their distressing shriek at being cut. While others claimed the smell was a mechanism of defense, fashioned over countless years and through a series of beneficial mutations. These answers always beg the question for me. Why are scientists so quick to think that mindless matter has such wonderful designs, yet reject the idea that there’s a God and that He is infinite in goodness?
But all the pages named this fragrance GLVs, Green Leaf Volatiles. It’s the “green” bouquet that grass emits when it is wounded by our blades. The chemist could explain that the contents of this mixture are also found in the scents of fruits we love so much. But I think this sweet and pungent smell is meant as a reminder from our God of the goodness that results from the pain of being brought low. Mowing isn’t meant to devastate. These trimmings are the path to richer growth. Just as we don’t focus on the shards of clipped remains, but on the beauty of the humbled lawn, this aroma should direct our thoughts to that “peaceful fruit of righteousness” that comes from being pruned. (Heb. 12:11)
Our nation and the world are being mowed right now. Few of us heard the mower as it rumbled to life some months ago, but seemingly overnight we feel it’s slicing, its reduction of our length each day. And the most difficult aspect of it all is the uncertainty of its ending. “My soul also is greatly troubled, but you O LORD – how long?” (Psa. 6:3) These days of tumult will have an end and then will come the aftermath. But maybe then we won’t be picking up the pieces. We never do, when our mulching mower’s done. Perhaps we’ll let the things we lost lie forgotten like the clippings on the ground. No, not the lives that were snuffed out in this horrid plague, but the frivolousness we’ve all had cut from our lives.
In one sense, we’ve been living in the aftermath all our days, the aftermath of Adam’s fall. We’ve never known what life was like without the plague of sin, and every day we feel the sorrow of a multitude of little aftermaths, those devastations left behind by all our sins towards God and neighbor. And diseases like this one aren’t merely blights that check our days, but symptoms of the greater curse of God upon our world. Sometimes that curse swings ‘round a brutal blade and humbles in particularly painful ways. But to His children, it’s a disciplining stroke, and the shearing’s never out of His control. This is what I think we’re experiencing now, a discipline that’s meant to make us grow.
But may that lovely fragrance of the chastened grass also remind you of another aftermath, the one that began one April morning long ago. The earth was shaken, the stone was rolled away, and death’s devastation was begun! That “firstborn among many brethren”, Who was cut down for our sins, walked out alive from the tomb into which He was carried dead just days before. We live within that greater aftermath, which will undo all the damage that the first had left behind. Be of good cheer, dear Saint, a glorious harvest is coming!
