Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22 - "Repeat These Words"

            If Lent is supposed to be those weeks in the church year that we set aside to do some self-reflection and to delve a bit more deeply into who we are and who God is and exactly what our relationship with this Supreme Being ought to be, then the Psalms are a good Biblical companion to carry along on this introspective journey.

            The Psalms, as we know them, are Jewish writings that often reflected events in the lives of the ancient Israelites - and always mirrored their emotions, passions, and feelings.  Contrary to more conservative opinion, the 150 psalms in our Bible were not penned by King David or King Solomon, nor did God compose them. 

            In fact, we do not know for sure how the psalms came to be – at the least whether women or men authored them and certainly not who those individuals might actually have been.  You see, before the psalms were written down and became part of our Biblical canon, they were songs – folk melodies.   Authorship was never an important consideration.

           

            So, you see, there is a lot we do not know about the psalms.  However, what we do know is that, in an uncanny way, they touch on our most profound human emotions.  In many ways, the psalms are like prayers, off-the-record conversations you and I might have had with God, moments of spiritual eavesdropping.  If we take the time to look, it is easy to find ourselves buried – and sometimes not very deeply – in the psalms.

            Were we to thumb through the psalms, we would find songs of immeasurable happiness (“Clap your hands with joy, all peoples”) as well as abject despair (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”).  We would find pleas for forgiveness (“Because of your great mercy, God, wipe away my sins.”).  We would discover cries for vengeance.  (“Babylon, you will be destroyed.  Happy is the man who pays you back for what you have done to us – who takes your babies and smashes them against a rock.”).  Yup – that is in one of the psalms – and maybe at one time or another, you have felt that way too.

            In most psalms, we find the singer eventually coming round to praising God for God’s unending compassion toward humanity. (“Even in my suffering, I was comforted because your promise brought me life.”).  But not always:  Sometimes the praise just cannot be found (“You, God, have made even my closest friends abandon me, and darkness is my only companion.”). In the psalms, we find ancient people doing and being and saying a lot of things that remind us of ourselves – if we dare to look into our hearts.

            The psalms were sung in a variety of settings and were passed on orally – by voice rather than by the written word – from generation to generation.  Psalm 107, part of which we just read this morning, was likely used in worship.  If we were to read the entire psalm, we would notice a repetition of phrases that is reminiscent of a responsive reading.  Its distinctive symmetry and order is like a litany.  

            Psalm 107 begins with a call to praise God, for God is the one who had rescued the Jewish people and brought them home, “back from foreign countries,” the psalmist proclaims, “from east and west, from north and south.” How meaningful those words must have been to the Israelites after they had returned to Jerusalem from Babylon, where they had been exiled for decades as war bounty.

            Again, if we were to read this psalm in its entirety, we would notice that it continues after the opening verses with the narration of four vignettes, little stories of people in trouble.  There are the fools that we read about, the ones starving to death, the suffering sick who needed to be healed.  The Psalmist also describes sailors in trouble on the high seas, prisoners suffering in their chains, and people wandering lost and aimless in the desert. 

            The form of the psalm repeats itself precisely each time.  First, there is a description of the event and the distress it has caused – hunger and thirst in the desert, gloom and darkness among those imprisoned, the suffering of the fools, the danger sailors faced at sea. 

            Then there is, in each instance, a recitation about prayer and its results - “Then in their trouble they called to the Lord, and God saved them from their distress.” 

           

            Following are details of what God did:  God led the wanderers out of the desert; God broke the prisoners’ chains; God healed the sick and starving; God calmed the raging seas and brought the sailors safely to port.

            Finally, there is a demand to thank God.  Again, the wording is always identical:  “They must thank the Lord for his constant love, for the wonderful things God did for them.”

            Old Testament scholar Nancy Claisse-Walford sums up the psalm and its structure well.  She writes, “Are the four vignettes actual accounts of deliverance by the Lord sung in celebration at a festival? Or is the psalm purely a literary composition, with the four groups representing "all those who have experienced the redemption of the Lord"? (James L. Mays) Whether the vignettes narrate real events or are metaphoric examples, the words of Psalm 107 are heartfelt words of celebration of divine deliverance.” 

            This psalm raises two important points that I will focus on briefly this morning.  The first is a question.  Just whom might this psalm touch deeply?  In other words, who is this psalm for anyway?  Does it have any relevance to me and to my circumstances?  The answer, I believe, is quite simple. 

            If you have ever felt that you were at the end of your rope, at your wits’ end, then this psalm is for you – and I would suggest that includes each one of us.  As Presbyterian pastor Philip McLarty writes, “This speaks to us all, at some time or another.  You’re going about your business, not causing trouble, doing your part, when all of a sudden, disaster strikes and the rug is pulled out from under you.

• The stock market falls and wipes out a lifetime of savings.

• The pathology report comes back with evidence of cancer.

• A competing firm buys out your company and your job is outsourced overseas.

• You get a call in the middle of night saying there’s been an accident, and your son or daughter is in the hospital and you need to come quickly.

            These things happen, and there’s no rhyme or reason to it.  How do you to explain to a young couple why their baby was born with birth defects?

      

            The Good News of this psalm is that, in all four examples of helplessness and despair, God proves (God’s) faithfulness.  God hears the cry of the needy and responds with compassion and love.  Listen!  Four times the psalmist writes,

            “Then in their trouble they called to the Lord, and God saved them from their distress.” 

            It’s a matter of faithfulness … God’s faithfulness.  God is faithful, even when we are not.  God is faithful, even when we bring misery on ourselves.  God is faithful, even when it’s due to circumstances beyond our control.  God is faithful.  Herein lies our hope.”

            Your life may seem perfect, but it will not always be that way because no matter who we are, life is not fair.  It may not have happened to you yet, but the pathology report (or its equivalent) will arrive, the midnight phone call (or its equivalent) will come.  The bottom will, at one time or another, fall out of your life – and when it does, remember this psalm – and remember our faithful God.

“Then in their trouble they called to the Lord, and God saved them from their distress.” 

            The second point I want us to consider is the opening verse of the psalm. “Give thanks to the Lord, because God is good; God’s love is eternal.”  So important is this call for thanksgiving that the psalmist tells us to “repeat these words in praise of the Lord.”

            Over my 35+ years in ministry, I have frequently heard people say they come to worship in order to be comforted.  The way they see it, worship is their personal time to lay down their troubles before God, to cry out in their distress, to get it (whatever “it” may be) off their chest.  

            Worship is their personal time to be comforted – and to forget.  It is their time to step out of our complex world and back into a simpler, seemingly easier time – before the pathology report, before the accident.  Now I do not have anything against finding comfort in church.  However, I do find that particular attitude toward worship to be very self-centered.

            Worship is not about us.  It is not about you, and it is not about me.  Worship is about God.  Worship is about giving our best to God.  Worship is about praising God.  It is about thanking God. 

It is about how we continue to thank God when Sunday morning is over.  And that is why I find this particular psalm so relevant this morning. 

            Remember the repetitive form of this psalm.  As worshippers, we are involved twice in this symmetry.  First, we seek comfort.  That is true.  We cry out to God in our distress.  But second, we thank God for God’s constant love. For the wonderful things God does.

             In the end, we do not come to worship only to be comforted.  Above all, we come to worship to thank God.  That is why the psalmist tells us right from the start – repeat these words – give thanks to God.  Repeat these words – give thanks to God. 

            When we get all tangled up in the form of worship, we need to step back and remember why we are here.  It is not about us.  It is about God. 

            The question is not: Does this sermon bring me comfort?  Does this hymn make me feel comfortable?  The question is:  Am I thanking God by giving my best to God when I worship?  Has this worship experience caused me to reflect more deeply on God’s message of justice, reconciliation and peace, so that I can continue to thank God in the actions I take in my life beyond these four walls? 

            In the end, worship is more about theology and how we understand our relationship to God than anything else – and the foundation of that relationship is not comfort, it is in living lives of thanksgiving.

            When I come to worship, am I preparing myself to thank God – not just for an hour on Sunday morning, but I would suggest, more importantly, for the other 167 hours in the week?  Am I giving thanks to the Lord in all that I do because God is good, and God’s love is eternal?  Repeat these words - “giving thanks to the Lord because God is good, and God’s love is eternal.”

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine

www.rvccme.org

 

Psalm 19 - The Voices of God

            When Donna and I attended the Calvin Institute of Worship Annual Symposium in Grand Rapids in January, I participated in a workshop entitled “Preaching from the Other Book.”  Going into it, I was intrigued. 

            I felt that I was fairly well acquainted with the primary book from which a preacher would preach, that is, the Bible.  However, I was curious about this “other” book.  What was it?  Was it something I had missed along the way in seminary?  Was it some new-fangled, politically correct notion of where to go to read what God is all about? 

            It turned out, of course, that it was neither of those things.  The “other “ book was not preaching primer that was collecting dust on a shelf in the Yale Divinity School Library.  And it certainly was not some post-modern approach to getting to know what God is all about.  The “other” book, it turned out, was creation.  That’s right – God’s creation – the natural world all around us.

            Creation and the Word – two ways of learning about who God is.  And in spite of the decades old environmental movement and the more recent concern about global climate change and its effect on us as a species and on our world, learning about God through creation is not one of these fashionably contemporary ideas that some of us turn up our noses at as being too liberal, too modern, too tree hugging. 

            Learning about God through creation goes back to at least the mid-fifth century CE, to the time of St. Patrick.  The idea that God chooses to reveal God’s sacredness to us human beings in not just one but two ways (scripture and creation) is foundational to Christianity as it first developed in Ireland, Scotland, and England. 

            A character in Kathleen Norris’ novel, Dakota, puts it well.  This young schoolgirl who had recently moved from Louisiana to North Dakota observed in wonder, “The sky is full of blue and full of the mind of God.”

            Embracing this duality in experiencing God does not come naturally to us in our New England protestant churches.  Enclosed within our four walls here, we focus on the mind piece rather well, much less so the blue sky.  And yet, Lutheran Old Testament Scholar Fred Gaiser writes about “the rich way in which creation and law, nature and word, complement each other, together bearing fuller witness to God than either alone.”

           

            It is Psalm 19, which we just read, that conjoins and affirms these two ways of seeing and understanding God, these two different ways through which God is revealed.  As Baptist theologian Greg Earwood cautions, “We must become bilingual, fluent in the two languages of creation and torah (or scripture). The speech of creation is visual, a kind of “sign language.”

            In a very different language torah (or scripture) instructs us in the wisdom of the Lord. From the psalmist we learn that creation and torah (or scripture) join together in testimony to the Lord God. They speak different languages, but have the same intent. One interprets the other, yet both point to the same God.”

            At first glance, Psalm 19 is like two separate meditations abruptly consolidated in the middle.  One might even wonder whether they were originally two distinct pieces of poetry.

You see, if you read only the first half of the psalm, you find a praise song of creation.  Similarly, if you reflect only on the second half, you discover a Torah psalm, that is, a psalm in praise of God’s law. 

           

            One part without the other is certainly not bad.  However, what makes Psalm 19 unique is the marvelous way in which the songwriter interweaves these two parts, so that we praise not only creation, but also torah – or the law – or scripture in the same breath.  The result is that the two seemingly divergent segments fit together incredibly well.

            The first six verses of the psalm are a marvelous testimony to the glory and splendor of God found most vividly and vibrantly in creation.  The images fling us to the farthest reaches of the universe, and there we find the heavens themselves declaring God’s glory and the skies proclaiming the work of God’s hands. 

            We envision the sun – day in and day out - emerging from the tent that God has pitched, as loving as a bridegroom, warming all the earth without fail.  What a marvelous word picture, one which we will reference again in the hymn we will sing together shortly.

            However, God’s glory is not only revealed in the outer reaches of the cosmos.  As the Psalmist tells us, “their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world,’ even reaching our ears.  If we are open to the beauty and mystery of creation, we learn something about who God is.  All of creation – all of it – reflects the magnificence of God Almighty. 

Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder

Consider all the worlds thy hands have made

I see the stars. I hear the rolling thunder

Thy power throughout the universe displayed

O God, how great thou art!

            Now, if all the psalmist wanted to express was a deep gratitude for God the Creator, then Psalm 19 would end with these glorious images of sun and stars.  However, Psalm 19 continues and suddenly changes its focus.  

            The natural world is no longer at the heart of the poem. The psalmist shifts from describing the God who is revealed to us through creation to characterizing the God who is revealed to us by another means.  Our focus deviates from the limitlessness of all creation to something that is far more concrete.

The Psalmist labels this second way that God is revealed as the law. 

            Now it is important to remember from last week’s sermon that we do not mean law in a legalistic sense.  The word is better translated as instruction, God’s instruction to humanity, God’s way and truth.

                    

            The law that the psalmist refers to is not a bunch of rules restricting us.  The essence of the law is living as God intends for us to live, existing and prospering “in harmony with God’s will—with God’s justice and mercy and love,” as Presbyterian pastor Alan Brehm puts it.  He goes on to say that “the bottom line is that torah (or scripture) like creation, is a means for helping us to “mind” God—i.e., keep in mind the things of God, the ways of God, God’s truth and God’s justice, God’s love and God’s mercy."

            Psalm 19 proclaims to us that within the law or within God’s sacred instructions, we have everything we need to return to the life God intended for us.

“The law of the Lord is perfect, 
refreshing the soul. 
The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, 
making wise the simple.  The precepts of the Lord are right, 
giving joy to the heart. 
The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes.”

            The law, scripture, this set of instructions (call it what you will) is not a burden, but rather a gift that has the potential to bring transformation, restoration, and renewal to us and to our world.

            What we have so far then is a psalm declaring that God reveals God’s glory through creation, and God reveals God’s character through Scripture.  Use your five senses and look to the natural world for God’s power and genius.  Then use your mind and look to the law, to Scripture, to tell you in another way what God is like and how God wants us to live. 

            Some people – quite a few these days actually – say that they do not need to read the Bible because they can worship God just fine in nature, with their golf clubs, in their boats with a beer.   However, Psalm 19 points out a certain lack of depth to that brand of spirituality.

            The Psalmist communicates clearly that the power and splendor of God in creation, whether that is experienced as the summer morning tee time on the golf course, the ripple of waves beneath the boat, or the way the beer heats up in the sun, is only part of the story.  To begin to understand God in all of God’s sacredness, one must search for God also in scripture, in Torah, in the Word, in the sacred instructions.  The God who is revealed in creation challenges us to learn the other part of that God’s story in scripture.  It is in scripture that we will discover the Way, God’s way.

           

             However, setting up this two-pronged revelation of God is not the end of this psalm.  The last verses offer one final thought about these voices of God.  Not only is God revealed in creation and in scripture, but God is also revealed in the response to all this of God’s servants – and that would be us.

            As Fred Gaiser, writes, “hearing the voice of God in creation, hearing the voice of God's law that gives us life, we can join the voice of the psalmist in the psalm's final section, appreciating the law's warning and its intention of keeping us from falling into transgression, praying at last that our words, our voice, (translated into our actions) be acceptable to God.”

            And what would those acceptable actions be?  Put bluntly, they are the ways we choose to take care of God’s stuff – from the world around us right down to our next door neighbor. More precisely, those actions would include, for example, considering your environmental footprint – and not immediately shutting down because you think that terminology is all liberal claptrap.  It could include something as small as bringing your own mug to Starbucks or Tim Horton.  It could include caring enough about senior citizens and others with inadequate health care in our communities to take action to influence our own state legislature.

            The words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts, which are translated into our intentional actions, means taking care of God’s stuff – the whole of God’s creation – as God teaches us to do in Scripture, as Jesus demonstrated in his own ministry.     Listen to the voices of God – and, as Christian Reformed pastor, Ken Gehrels’ writes, “remember how it felt the last time your neighbor let his dog do its business on your lawn and just walked away without cleaning it up? Remember how mad you were, how insulted you felt? How we treat another person’s stuff tells us a lot about what we think of the other person. Including God. And God’s stuff. “  All of God’s stuff. 

O God, may these words of my mouth, this meditation of my heart, and the actions they cause me to take, be pleasing in your sight, God,  my Rock and my Redeemer.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine

www.rvccme.org

Psalm 25 - Sacred Instructions

            It is Lent.  It is the time here in church that we mark the journey of Jesus to the Holy City of Jerusalem, the epicenter of Judaism in the ancient world, the place where all the events of Holy Week occur – from the palm parade to the turning of the tables in the temple to the last supper to the betrayal, the trial, and the crucifixion.  Jesus is on an epic journey.  The rabbi is on the move.

            It is Lent.  It is the time here in church when we – you and I who call ourselves his modern day disciples - mirror the journey of Jesus to Jerusalem with our own journeys.  We too are on the move, attempting as best as we can to follow in his footsteps, but all the while also trying to make sense of the craziness of our world, struggling to untangle why we continue to do the things we do – inflicting hurt and ignoring the pain it causes, venturing to figure out why the Gospel message seems so far away and so much more like a dream than a reality. 

            It is Lent.  It is a time of passions and feelings.  And so it is appropriate to begin the season with a psalm, one of those Biblical vessels overflowing with all that lies deepest in our human hearts and souls. The psalms express our most profound – and often most troubling – emotions like no other writing in the entire Bible.

            We will not begin Lent with just any psalm, of course, and definitely not with an old favorite like the joyous and celebratory 100^th – “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the lands. Serve the Lord with gladness: come before God’s presence with singing. “ No – we will not begin Lent with that kind of psalm because Lent is not a particularly joyous and celebratory season. 

            Instead, we begin this rather somber season of introspection, these weeks of journeying inside ourselves, with a psalm that is less widely read and so quite a bit less popular.  It is at first an individual lament (and who likes lamenting), and then it is an acknowledgement of all the failures that have, over all the years from our very youth, darkened our lives (and who likes reliving those most embarrassing and most forgettable moments).  And finally it is a plea (and who like to go a’beggin”).  This psalm is an entreaty for guidance to the God who is always to be trusted.  It is an appeal for a set of sacred instructions.

            From the very deepest part of her being, the psalm singer asks God not to put her to shame, not to let her enemies gloat over her broken and regrettable life.  She makes a heartfelt request to this faithful God of hers to teach her and all who wait upon the Lord the true ways, the ways of the Holy One. 

            The Psalms are a good companion to take with us on a Lenten journey – if for no other reason that surely Jesus carried the psalms with him on his climactic journey to Jerusalem.  The psalms, you see, were the songs of the ancient Jewish people, his people.   Jesus would have used the psalms when he and his followers worshipped together in the evening or as he did his own daily private devotions.

            I like to think that the Psalms had an enormous and deeply profound meaning for Jesus because these wonderful poetic chants and ditties and laments poured forth the same thoughts and emotions that surely he carried with him on his journey – and that we too schlepp along with us.  Joy to be sure and great high hope and holy praise, but also anger, loneliness, weariness, and even abject despair.  Brian Erickson notes that the Psalms "read more like monologues than conversations, exercises in spiritual eavesdropping." 

            This particular psalm that we are reflecting on this morning is actually one of nine acrostic psalms, meaning that each line begins with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet.  The point of an acrostic psalm is simple.  It is meant to cover a particular subject in its entirety, from “A to Z” so to speak. 

            The purpose of Psalm 25 then is to re-orient us, to set us off once and for all in the right direction – which, when you think about it, is the point of Lent as well.  The function of Psalm 25 is to pass on to us some important sacred instructions.

            It is Lent, and so we journey with Jesus, as Lutheran pastor, Sara Olson-Smith writes, “honest about our own failings and struggles, our souls lifted up to God, for only God can give us forgiveness and power to change. (We journey), truthful about our despair and grief and weariness, our souls lifted up to God, for only God can bring our life out of death, dancing from our mourning.”  We journey, searching, always searching.

            But what do we journey toward?  What ought we to be searching for?  Do you think Jesus ever asked those questions too as he made his way to Jerusalem?  Might he ever have whispered the psalmist’s words too: “Make me know your ways, O God”?  I do not know about Jesus, but I do know that if Lent is to have any meaning whatsoever for us this year, then those questions must be our questions.  

            What is the true pathway that we are supposed to seek?  God, which way do you want us to go?    What is your Torah (which is the Hebrew word for instructions)?  O God, teach me to live according to your truth….please.

            Sacred instructions:  That is what the psalmist seeks.  But what are those instructions?  As Presbyterian pastor Alan Brehm notes in his blog, “Most of us have labored under the mistaken notion that the Torah was the law, something from which we have been set free by Jesus. But nothing could be further from the truth. The torah is not a set of rules that are intended to bind us or to be codified into a set of laws. The torah is God’s instruction (and this is important:  The Torah is God’s instruction for how to live) in light of the reality that God is working in this world to make all things new.”

             “Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.”  How am I to live?  What is the path I am to seek?  Give me somedirection here, God. 

            And you know what?  In the end, the Psalmist answers her own question – and the answer is important, so take note!  “All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness.”

            It is pretty simple, when you come right down to it.  When all is said and done, there is really only one instruction: Steadfast love and faithfulness, like God’s covenant faithfulness to the Hebrew people and, through Jesus, like God’s covenant love for us. 

            And if you are not sure exactly sure what covenant faithfulness is or covenant love involves, then this is important too:  No matter what the Hebrew people did or how disobedient they were, God still loved them.  Likewise, no matter what we do or how many times we turn away, God still faithfully walks beside us, ready to lead us home. 

            That is steadfast love and faithfulness – at its simplest and yet most profound and beautiful.  And that is the challenge that God lays before us, we who are here because somewhere along the way we made a commitment to live as Jesus lived. 

            God’s instruction is to emulate God’s character—being faithful in relationships, loving in a way that never quits, working to set all things right in the world. (Alan Brehm blog)  Alan Brehm writes, “One of the fundamental lessons of Lent is that we are called to live the life of the kingdom of God. But another one of the fundamental lessons of Lent is that we cannot live the life of the kingdom on our own.

            The only way we can possibly achieve any success is if God “teaches” us. Being humble enough to seek God’s instruction is a matter of trust—of entrusting ourselves to God’s goodness and steadfast love and faithfulness, and being willing to take the risk of following God’s ways.”

            And Jesus, of course, is our role model.  Jesus emulates the character of God fully.  Jesus embodies God and the way God wants us to live.  And that is what this Lenten journey is all about.  That is what following in the footsteps of Jesus these 40 days (not counting Sundays) until Easter means. 

            Lent is our opportunity in a very intentional way through prayer and study and hands on giving and mission to learn the ways of Jesus, to try our hand at following God’s instructions, to let go of old grudges and resentments, to see what our lives and our world might be like if the balance of power that we have put in place was shifted to the one that God would have us put in place. 

            When Lent is over, will we have all the answers?  Probably not.  When Lent is all over, will the world be a different place?  Highly unlikely.  What then is the point of first seeking and then following God’s sacred instructions.

         One day a pilgrim began a long journey in search of peace, joy, and love. The pilgrim's journey passed through landscapes that were not always happy ones —through war, sickness, quarrels, rejections, and separations.  The pilgrim also passed through lands where the more people possessed, the more warlike they became; the more they had to defend, the more they needed to attack each other. Longing for peace, they prepared for war. Longing for love, they surrounded themselves with walls of distrust and barriers of fear.

         One morning, however, the pilgrim came to a lone little cottage beside the road, a hut that seemed to beckon him inside.  Full of curiosity, he pilgrim entered.  Inside the cottage was a little shop, and behind the counter stood a shopkeeper.

         “What would you like?” asked the shopkeeper.

         “What do you stock here?” asked the pilgrim.

         “Oh, we have all the things here that I’m sure you most long for”' replied the shopkeeper. “Just tell me what you desire.”

         “Well, I want peace in my own family, in my native land, and in the whole world. I want those who are sick to be healed and whole once more and those who are lonely to have friends.

I want those who are hungry to have enough to eat.”

         There was a pause, while the pilgrim reviewed this shopping list. Gently, the shopkeeper broke in. “I'm sorry. I should have explained. We don't supply the fruits here. We only supply the seeds.”

         And so it is with God’s sacred instructions, with the ministry of Jesus, with the Gospel message that he leaves with us.  We have the directions, but the finished product is up to us.

         May your Lenten journey truly take you in the footsteps of Jesus.  May God’s ways be made known to you in a more compelling manner than they ever have before.  May the sacred instructions become much clearer, and, like the pilgrim looking for his heat’s desire, may you become motivated enough to pick up lots of seeds along the way.