GOD'S GRASSROOTS PROVISION - Our Creator is faithful to His plans and His people. One evidence of His abundant provision for all His creatures is literally under our feet. The leaves of green plants, including grasses, testify that our Creator is clever, capable, careful, and caring. This “hidden in plain view” providence showcases the food chain that begins with photosynthesis, the sunlight-powered carbohydrate-manufacturing of nutritious food for herbivores, who themselves become food for carnivores and/or insectivores. Grass is designed to grow after its top portions are eaten by grazers. The God who provides for “the grass of the field” surely provides for us. In times of calamity and crisis, it’s easy to question whether life makes sense — or, more accurately, how God is making ultimate sense of everything. Unsurprisingly, fallen humans propose answers that miss the mark, failing to understand how a good-yet-groaning world can accomplish the perfect purposes of the Creator. The pages of Scripture provide the big-picture answer that this life is the best of all prequels for the best of all possible eternities. Scripture also gives the best of all counsel for life here and now. Our Creator is faithful to His plans and His people. One evidence of His abundant provision for all His creatures is literally under our feet. The leaves of green plants, including grasses, testify that our Creator is clever, capable, careful, and caring.

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God's Grassroots Provision

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Our Creator is faithful to His plans and His people. One evidence of His abundant provision for all His creatures is literally under our feet. The leaves of green plants, including grasses, testify that our Creator is clever, capable, careful, and caring. This “hidden in plain view” providence showcases the food chain that begins with photosynthesis, the sunlight-powered carbohydrate-manufacturing of nutritious food for herbivores, who themselves become food for carnivores and/or insectivores. Grass is designed to grow after its top portions are eaten by grazers. The God who provides for “the grass of the field” surely provides for us.

BY JAMES J. S. JOHNSON, J.D., TH.D. 

In times of calamity and crisis, it’s easy to question whether life makes sense — or, more accurately, how God is making ultimate sense of everything.

Unsurprisingly, fallen humans propose answers that miss the mark, failing to understand how a good-yet-groaning world can accomplish the perfect purposes of the Creator.

The pages of Scripture provide the big-picture answer that this life is the best of all prequels for the best of all possible eternities.

Scripture also gives the best of all counsel for life here and now.

Our Creator is faithful to His plans and His people. One evidence of His abundant provision for all His creatures is literally under our feet.

The leaves of green plants, including grasses, testify that our Creator is clever, capable, careful, and caring.

This “hidden in plain view” providence showcases the food chain that begins with photosynthesis, the sunlight-powered carbohydrate-manufacturing of nutritious food for herbivores, who themselves become food for carnivores and/or insectivores.

Grass is designed to grow after its top portions are eaten by grazers.

The main growing parts [of grasses] are not at the stem tips, but at the base of the leaves.

This means that as the leaves are eaten by herbivores, they simply regrow and replace their lost parts.…[with] many [grasses having] a specialized form of photosynthesis which is particularly efficient under high light intensity and high temperature conditions.

It is also a system which allows more carbon dioxide to be fixed per unit of water than conventional photosynthesis.

Examples of such food chains include large grass-grazing herbivores like bovines, sheep, and pronghorns that are eaten by humans, cougars, or bears.

Smaller herbivores such as rabbits are eaten by wolves or foxes.

Many herbivores go unnoticed because they are even smaller, like grasshoppers (which include locusts), leafhoppers, and crickets.

These tiny herbivores are eaten by insectivores—mammals (aardvark, pangolin), reptiles (gecko, chuckwalla), birds (flycatchers, bee-eaters), and even some humans, like John the Baptist.

Edible herbivorous insects like grasshoppers (the most popular insect food for humans), termites (the next-most popular), crickets, and ants are recognized as an underdeveloped potential food supply for needy nations that abound with these types of insects. 

Spraying field crops with pesticides produces toxicity problems if crop-attracted insects are captured and eaten by humans.

But grasshoppers/locusts, termites, and crickets — as well as edible beetles, moths, ants, wasps, leafhoppers, planthoppers, cicadas, and pentatomid bugs — are available to help alleviate famines if these arthropods can be secured apart from pesticides.

When a field crop is covered with a plague of locusts, some despair.

Optimists, however, recognize that locusts are providentially edible and seek practical solutions for taking useful advantage of potential food sources.

The God who provides for “the grass of the field” surely provides for us.

* Dr. Johnson is Associate Professor of Apologetics and Chief Academic Officer at the Institute for Creation Research.

The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) wants people to know that God’s Word can be trusted in everything it speaks about—from how and why we were made, to how the universe was formed, to how we can know God and receive all He has planned for us.

After 50 years of ministry, ICR remains a leader in scientific research within the context of biblical creation. Founded by Dr. Henry Morris in 1970, ICR exists to conduct scientific research within the realms of origins and Earth history, and then to educate the public both formally and informally through professional training programs, through conferences and seminars around the country, and through books, magazines, and media presentations.

https://www.icr.org/article/god-grassroots-provision/