Lessons From Green Beans

We can learn spiritual truths from nature. The characteristic of the left-handed green beans can teach us great spiritual truths.

The first characteristic is the peculiar way in which the left-handed green beans grow and climb a pole or string. It grows differently from other climbing vines. It climbs from left to right. This is why it is called left-handed green beans.

Who told it to grow this way? Who put the nature in it to climb?

You can find great comfort and edification when you understand the truths God is portraying to us through the peculiarity of the left-handed green bean.

Ephesians 1:4 says, “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundations of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.”

God knows all about us. He knows our likes and dislikes. He knows the number of hairs on our head. He knows our personality. We sometimes want to be like somebody else, but God made us in his divine plan and purpose so we will grow that way. It is in the nature of the bean to grow from left to right even when other beans do not. We are also unique and an individual. God decreed it so. God’s decree is God’s will. The bean did not ask God how he should grow. From eternity God determined it to be so.

Should God consult with us how the left-handed green bean should grow, there would be confusion. God is Sovereign, and He is the one who decrees how nature should be.

Psalm 115:3 says, “But our God is in the heavens, He hath done whatsoever He hath pleased.” When planted , the bean knows which direction it is to grow. The roots grow down, and the sprouts climb upward. It does not grow like grass, straight up just so high and fall over. Who is directing the growth patterns of nature?

In an automated world, people are confused and fearful of the future. Mental institutions are full, while thriving psychiatrists, psychologists, and counselors have failed to stem the tide. Psychosomatic illnesses from stress are causing the clinics to be full. This indicates people are not able to cope with pressures of everyday life.

Jesus spoke about the cure of anxiety in Matthew 6:25-27, “Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are you not better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?”

This does not mean to not be industrious in life but to trust in the Father’s care.