INEDIBLE!

Lots of tree shade and a soil acidity change combined as a “welcome mat” for some unwanted visitors late this fall. I woke up, looked outside, and behold—lots of little white “umbrellas” under the backyard fir trees, which have a thick rug of moist needle “mulch” underneath them.

Forget the cutesy drawings of little fairies or gnomes pulling a mushroom out of the ground for a quickie umbrella. Some mushrooms are edible, but many are not. In fact, they can make you very sick or even kill. They have lovely names like “Death Cap” and “Destroying Angel.” Not savvy enough to know what these were, I went the safe route. Donning my garden gloves, I pulled up each mushroom, dumped it in a bag, and then dropped the bag in the trash.  Not one to take chances, I'll reserve my “mushroom hunting” to the little cans at the grocery store!

If you research “mushrooms” on the internet, your blood may run cold from the warnings of toxicity of many varieties. But the edible ones are there, too. One ad promoted a pound of dried morel mushrooms for $222. Re-read the amount: a pound! I understand why: hard to find. But they're free to foraging animals—bears to boars—who find them in the wild and go yum yum.

It's okay if, after reading a bit about mushroom hunters, you read Jeremiah 15:16 (KJV) with a different perspective:

Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart: for I am called by thy name, O LORD God of hosts.

And maybe a chorus from the 1970s-or-so will come to mind with its music to these verses in Psalm 19:9-10 (KJV):

 The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.

I'm not implying any connection with the Bible and mushrooms, other than that the Bible often uses very ordinary comparisons to help us understand heavenly truths. Yes, finding honey was a big deal in Bible times. As for me, I don't think I've ever eaten a morel mushroom. The cheap canned stems and pieces on the grocery shelf, yes. The common fresh ones in the produce section (great for stir-fry), yes.

And maybe here's another lesson. God sometimes uses earthly analogies to help us understand heavenly realities. Even as we eat food (including “safe” mushrooms) to sustain our earthly bodies, our “spiritual nutrition” needs to include scripture. What's written there didn't suddenly pop up overnight. But it's pure enough and “nutritious enough” to keep us growing closer to God.

Mushrooms and Psalm 1

Talk about “night visitors”! As I went outside juggling a basket of wet laundry, I almost stepped on some surprise squatters. These brown umbrella disks had popped overnight through some scraggly grass where I’d overwatered. If you didn’t know, a mushroom is a fast-growing fungus that feeds off decaying matter and is common in moist places. I knew they wouldn’t last more than a few days, but went ahead and snapped them away, depositing them in the garbage.  I’d recently studied Psalm 1 and toyed with how verse 3 (about the godly man) would read if mushrooms were substituted for that tree planted by streams of water:

He is like a mushroom that pops up in moist places. He feeds on decay, and in a couple days withers away.

Obviously, the analogy doesn’t work. The psalmist made the perfect analogy to a sturdy fruit tree whose roots grow deep, producing fruit season after season. The application, of course, is sending out deep spiritual roots that will support the growing of spiritual fruit.

This is the growth process J. Oswald Sanders wrote about in The Joy of Following Jesus: “It is the responsibility of the disciple to be the best he or she can be for God.  To please Him is a most worthy aim. He wants us to realize the full purpose of our creation; He does not want us to be content with bland mediocrity” (Moody, 1994, p. 63).

Perhaps it’s because I’m so aware of media addictions that this quote burns into my heart. The “mushroom mentality” feeds on the world’s decay, widely served up enticingly with the click of a computer mouse or a TV remote. Every morning, for example, when I open up my computer’s “home page” to check the weather or start some research, I’m blindsided by what someone thinks is “news” or “trend.” The computer helps me as a writer on spiritual topics, but I could waste hours following cutesy animal videos, celebrity gossip, fashion, sports, games, or personal trivia.

Sanders hit it on the nail: “Many fail to achieve anything significant for God or man because they lack a dominating ambition.  No great task was ever achieved without the complete abandonment to it that a worthy ambition inspires.” How we use our time is a choice—for good or bad. Sanders cited the story of Thomas Scott (1747-1821), who was the low-achiever of his school.  In those days they called him the “dunce.”  Most of his teachers expected little of him.  But someone, somewhere, said something that awakened in him a master ambition.  Slowly, steadily he worked toward it. Sanders continued, “He grew to be a strong and worthy man”—so well-regarded that he succeeded John Newton (former slave trader-turned-believer, best known for “Amazing Grace”) as rector of the church at Aston Sandford.

 

He also wrote a large commentary on the whole Bible that influenced his generation and is still consulted. Scott didn’t achieve that feeding on the decay of the world.  His roots went down deep with God. His life yielded fruit. His leaves didn’t wither. What he did, prospered.

“Mushroom” choices aren’t anything new. The apostle Paul anguished over those he saw in his times, and encouraged stronger believers to help those so entrapped. But he offered a warning for the “helpers” as well: be careful. His counsel in Galatians 6:1 (at right) is a good “screen saver”!