My worms are warm.  Warm worms are happy worms.  I feed them fruit and vegetable scraps from our kitchen.  Recently I expanded my worm farm.  Now I have two bins.  More worms eat more trash. 

I’m glad my worms are happy.  When they are happy they do their redemptive work.  The worms eat the bacteria that forms on decaying vegetable matter.  When they eat and digest my trash, the end result (get it?) is nutrient-rich excrement.  Really.

Worm Excrement Is Good

I like worm excrement.  Don’t laugh at me about this.  Its a simple thing.  Worm excrement is good because it is packed full of good things that help plants grow.  So, I like worm excrement especially when it is mixed with the soil in my garden or planting pots.

But there’s more to my fondness for worm excrement.  The worms (and their crap) remind me that something good can come from my trash.  This gives me hope.  Even my kitchen trash can become a nutrient-rich blessing for potting soil.  Sure, I know, this trash-to-blessing journey takes a detour through worm excrement.  But the end result (there I go again!) is good soil!  Something good can come from my trash.

I think worms are a gift from God.  I happen to be one of those sappy optimists who believes God will make good things happen — even when the raw materials are not so good…smelly and decayed.  Like me, for example. 

Worm Excrement Gives Me Hope

This is the up side of worm theology.  The worms remind me that God’s love for me (and you) is so strong and so tenacious that even the smelly, rotting parts of me can be transformed into something good.  This gives me hope.

We need hope.  Lots of people need hope.  I am thinking about the children in Haiti tonight.  They need hope.  Tens of thousands of them are new orphans.  They just lost their moms and dads.  They are alone.  Children.  That’s a lot of trash in their young lives.  That’s a lot of decay.  But I have hope that God’s love for those kids is enough.  I have hope that even though the children have been ripped from the safety of their homes and families — somehow, someday, they will feel safe and loved again.  I learned this from my worms.

© Copyright by Jeffrey Y. Harlow, Ph.D (2010).