Cotton and what really makes our lives

Cotton to the horizon.

 

The plants have been defoliated, and in the sunny days ahead, mechanical pickers will lumber across these fields stripping the bolls. They’ll be dumped into giant mesh containers and trucked to a gin.

And perhaps one not too distant day, this cotton will be fashioned into fabric used in a couture design on the runways of Paris, or a sheet to keep a baby warm in a neonatal unit,  starched into the shirt of a politician in Washington, used in a towel by an Olympic swimmer, woven into the jeans of a Texas cowboy, or knit into socks to keep a child’s feet warm near the Arctic circle.

In a few years, it might find new life as a second-hand cotton tee shirt handed to a ten year old by a missionary in the favillas of Brazil, or provide the covering of a sleeping mat for a homeless person on the streets of New York.

What is America’s Cotton Producers and Importer’s slogan? “Cotton, it’s the fabric of our lives.”

Well, it is. For people like me who sometimes develop a rash when wearing synthetic textiles, cotton is comfort. I could be wearing fabric made from these very bolls some day. (They didn't pay me to say this!)

There is something much more profound, however, which really composes the fabric of our lives.

“When outsiders who have never heard of God’s law follow it more or less by instinct, they confirm its truth by their obedience. They show that God’s law is not something alien, imposed on us from without, but woven into the very fabric of our creation. There is something deep within them that echoes God’s yes and no, right and wrong” (Romans  2:14-15).

God’s truth is woven into the warp and weft of our existence. It provides the boundaries and environment that provide safety and comfort in our spiritual journey, and when we err from it, we suffer.

So, whether we acknowledge it or not, God’s law IS the fabric of our lives—“the fabric of creation,” more far-reaching than any cotton boll, and more enduring.

If you want fresh strength, far better any day to invest in God’s word than commodity futures.

But aren't those cotton fields beautiful?