Veggie Tales

The world is a cynical place. It can be cold and isolating. Love and trust are penalized perhaps more often than they are rewarded.

Technology envelops us and frequently controls us. Lifestyles are built around Google calendars.

What’s the antidote to this?

Tomatoes.

Maybe carrots. Perhaps even eggplant.

Wait. What?

Two Saturdays ago I spent the morning at a farmers’ market in Madison, Wis. If one needs proof of God’s love for us—or even of his existence—this is a place to find evidence.

The sheer number of tomato varieties boggles the mind. The multicolored and striped carrots cause jaws to drop. The purple-black sheen of the summer-fresh eggplant is a feast for the eyes.

No one but God could make that color. No other being could conceive of a hue so rich, deep, and complex.

Only God could even want to make dozens of kinds of peppers! He could have stopped at one. Red or green would have sufficed. But no! God gave us all the colors, tastes, and smells our senses could handle, and then he kept going.

Beautiful pink-and-white radishes dangle from their leafy stems, promising a flavor different from their bitter red counterparts.

And this says nothing of the array of herbs that filled the booths surrounding Wisconsin’s capitol building. Basil—be it lemon, Thai, or something else entirely—tempted noses before eyes could take in the whole scene.

So why?

Why do we need all of this? Well, of course, we don’t. But God made it anyway. God’s imagination is limitless, and thus, so is God’s creation. Why did he keep inventing different lengths and widths of beans? Why did God make tomatoes named cherry, grape, and plum?

Because God could. And because God wanted to give us, his most beloved creations, more splendor than we could conceive of.

And he does this still today, every day. He gives without bounds, in ways we cannot understand or sometimes appreciate or even acknowledge.

Think of the color of that eggplant. If God can make a vegetable so stunningly beautiful, think what he can do with a human person.

All we have to do is grow, turning toward the light God provides for us.

About the Author

Jennifer Scroggins

Jennifer Scroggins joined Franciscan Media in July 2010 as division director of content creation and services. A northern Kentucky native, Jennifer is passionate about travel, sports, cooking, fitness, music and the Catholic faith. She is a member of St. Paul parish in Florence, Ky.