Spiritual Photosynthesis

He says, "Walk by faith."

I say, "Yes Lord. How do I walk by faith?"

He says, "By looking unto Jesus."

My mind starts imagining walking down the trail and seeing not evergreens and aspens, but Jesus; not mountains, but Jesus; not bighorn sheep and deer and chipmunks, but Jesus; and if I was a cartoon character, you would see the big question mark appear above my head.

He says, "No, it's not like that. It's using a different organ than your eyes. Consider photosynthesis."

The plant is not "seeing." [I had just read in a biochemistry textbook that both vision and photosynthesis happen using the mechanism of an action potential across a membrane. Amazing!] Just by being exposed to the light, the plant conducts photosynthesis. All the machinery is there. All it needs is light. Exposure to the light sets the machinery going and causes air and water to be formed into glucose. The plant is bearing fruit. Out of the most unlikely of materials, sugar! And all because God Himself put the machinery there, and God Himself provides the delivery mechanisms for light, air, and water.

So I just need to be exposed to the light, live in the light, bask in the light.

Jesus is the light.

The key to my fruit bearing is not my exertion, it is my position. Imagine a plant, in the dark, trying to use force to push electrons across the membrane and split water and stick carbon molecules together. That's about as laughable as me trying to bear fruit in my own strength. That would require the plant to have a vast extra number of moving parts that would cost more energy to use than they produced, not to mention the problems of how they would get electrons in the first place, and how all that extra stuff would fit into the cell.

What a difference it makes to simply let the leaf "look" unto the light. Suddenly all the problems disappear as the elegant, compact machinery of photosynthesis hums naturally into action. The light provides the energy. The light, in fact, is the energy, and therefore all the parts work. Does the plant "feel" the effort and the weight of what it is doing? No more than I "feel" the operation of the action potential across the membrane in the cells of my eyes in order to see.

Has not God provided to me the means and the power for bearing fruit? And is it not surely even more efficient and elegant than chlorophyll or mitochondria or rods and cones?