Since the psalmist is talking to God, why doesn’t he ask instead that new cattle appear like manna from heaven? For God, the one is no harder than the other. He made the world to work the way it does, and doesn’t seem to care to change it without good reason.
One thing does change in the psalm—the meaning of the fertility. It isn’t to be mere good luck—it would be a working-out of God’s love for the psalmist.
The fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, etc—appear as physical actions with supernatural meaning. Laziness isn’t patience, though when you’re standing in line they may look similar.
St Therese said it well—our goal shouldn’t be to do great things, but to do small things with great love (The one who is faithful in a very little thing is also faithful in much.). Jesus said that anyone who gave a cup of cold water in His name would not lose his reward.
Meaning matters.
We are told that “God is love.” The converse isn’t always true—what we call love is usually, as Lewis emphasized in Till We Have Faces, so polluted by self-interest that it’s presumptuous to call it love at all. But perhaps I can say that insofar as it is right, and is love, then God is there—in a different way from His “ordinary” omnipresence.
This is not to say that we in ourselves have the power to make God incarnate in the world, but we have the opportunity to let His love become physical and bring Himself more deeply into creation.
To be clear, I take it that God, though "simple" in Himself, is present in the world in different ways—in Jesus, in the Lord’s Supper, through the Holy Spirit living in us, in our neighbor (the least of these), and of course in His omnipresence that even the philosophers recognize. I think that He is also present in our obedient acts of love.
I emphasize obedient, because we’re good at fooling ourselves. It’s the same kind of problem as “How do you worship God?” Worship somehow has to be commensurate with our nature—or we couldn’t do it. I can’t worship God the same way a star would if it could. Unfortunately all kinds of idolatries also seem to fit. The rules need to come from God.
They can be rules of action or renunciation. Fasting is a classic. It is a sacrifice and self-discipline, oriented to our need for God and understanding that the physical/mental world isn’t all there is. Some people fast for a while from the news, or from entertainments. In contrast, things like the ancient Syrian eremites who stood with outstretched arms day and night, or those Buddhist monks who starved themselves into mummies—these don’t pass the test. They point away from love in action, and imagine that the body itself is evil.
In the opposite direction I hear: “love is Love.” No, it isn’t; it's not good enough without righteousness to orient it. Dante depicted this nicely.
The orthodox doctrine says that in the resurrection we will be not merely disembodied ghosts, but returned to a (repaired) physicality. We will be images of God in physical form and physical action.
Jesus called many to follow Him in special ways. But He told the Gaderene demoniac (who wanted to follow!) to go home and tell what great things God had done for him—go evangelize! “Take up your bed and go home.” “Go and sin no more.” “I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel! … Go”
Is the renunciate life better? Paul seemed to think so, but he was careful to admit that this was simply him speaking: wisely, since Jesus sent people home sometimes. How often we don't know, but there were only about 120 at Pentacost and He'd had thousands of followers.
It seems to me that making God’s love incarnate in the world through ordinary living is also a high calling.
Both require the power of God to fulfill.
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