Lectio Divina — “Against”
Day 7 of the Season of Creation
Monday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time — Labor Day
1. Lectio — against
> “…is it against the law on the sabbath to do good…?”
— Luke 6:9
Jesus places before me a strangely simple question: Can doing good ever be against what God intends?
The scribes and Pharisees have become so concerned with guarding the law that they risk using the law against the very good for which the law exists. Jesus refuses that inversion. The Sabbath was given for life, communion, restoration and freedom. Therefore, when Jesus encounters the man with the withered hand, he does not merely discuss goodness. He does good.
On this Labor Day, that question becomes particularly sharp: What is my labor for—and what is it against?
God has entrusted the earth to me, but the earth is not merely something upon which I work. It is something within which I have been given my own place. If I forget the original goodness of creation, my work can become strangely self-defeating. I can labor against the soil that feeds me, against the water that sustains me, against creatures that share this home with me—and ultimately against myself.
Lord, teach me the law of doing good.
2. Meditatio — against
While laboring on Labor Day at The Glenn, I notice a bumblebee laboring too.
Being the man I am, I immediately begin comparing its labor with mine. The bee does not have a Labor Day. It does not punch a clock or calculate productivity. It simply goes about the work written into its creaturely existence: flower to flower, pollen to pollen, participating in a web of life vastly larger than itself.
And there is the uncomfortable difference between the bee and me.
The bee cannot consciously decide to labor against creation’s good.
I can.
My intelligence and freedom allow me to cooperate consciously with God’s creation, but they also give me the terrible possibility of working against it. I can take what was given as gift and treat it merely as resource. I can use soil without tending it, consume water without considering its future, and confuse ownership with absolute dominion.
Perhaps that is what it means to act against myself. God has given the earth to humanity, but God has also given me to myself. I too am part of the gift I am capable of damaging.
Yesterday my word was “listens.” Today it is “against.”
Maybe the two belong together.
If I first listen—to Scripture, to creation, to the limits of the land, to the needs of other creatures, and to the quiet warnings contained in diminishing water—perhaps I will recognize where my habits are moving against the good before the damage becomes irreversible.
This Season of Creation speaks to me particularly through Living Water. Water flowing from a hose at The Glenn can seem ordinary precisely because I have grown accustomed to its availability. Yet every drop asks a moral question: Darrell, what are you doing with the gift entrusted to you?
The bumblebee cannot answer that question.
I can.
And perhaps that is both the glory and the burden of human labor.
3. Oratio — Prayer
Lord Jesus Christ,
You ask me whether it is lawful to do good,
and too often I complicate Your simple question.
Forgive me when my labor works against Your purposes:
when convenience becomes more important than stewardship,
consumption more important than communion,
and possession more important than gratitude.
Teach me to listen before I act.
As I watch the bee labor at The Glenn,
give me the humility to recognize that creation
is not simply raw material waiting for my command,
but a community of creatures praising You
according to the purposes You have given them.
During this Season of Creation,
teach me especially to reverence Living Water.
May I never pollute, squander or selfishly consume
what You intend for the good of all.
Bless the work of my hands today.
Let my labor cooperate with Your labor,
my intelligence serve Your wisdom,
and my freedom choose Your good.
May nothing I build, cultivate, consume or create
become a weapon against my neighbor,
against creation,
against myself,
or against You.
Amen.
4. Contemplatio — against
The bumblebee helps me understand something that artificial intelligence cannot.
AI can calculate more rapidly than I can. It can sift enormous quantities of information, recognize patterns and generate words—including the words through which I am forming this meditation. But it does not stand beside me at The Glenn and experience the bee.
It does not feel the September morning. It does not know thirst. It cannot love Living Water. It cannot experience remorse after wasting it. And it cannot stand before God and decide that tomorrow it will live differently.
I can.
That distinction means that intelligence alone cannot guarantee that my labor serves the good. Indeed, the greater my technological power becomes, the greater my capacity becomes to work either for or against the purposes written into creation.
A machine may help me determine how much water I am consuming. It might analyze rainfall, monitor soil moisture, control irrigation or tell me where water can be conserved. Those could be genuine goods. But the machine cannot make the moral decision that water is something I ought to protect.
That belongs to conscience.
The bumblebee does not require moral discernment because it cannot choose to rebel against its creaturely purpose. AI does not exercise moral discernment because it possesses neither conscience nor responsibility.
But I stand strangely between them: a creature like the bee, yet endowed with reason, freedom, conscience and responsibility.
And therefore I can choose.
Perhaps holiness on this Labor Day is not primarily about accomplishing more. Perhaps it is about learning to ask before every accomplishment:
Is what I am doing working with God’s good—or against it?
I look again at the bumblebee.
It continues its work without answering me.
Perhaps it already has.
Day 7 of the Season of Creation on Labor Day
