RIVER CITY JOURNAL: HERE'S ANOTHER EFFORT TO SOLVE A DIVINE MYSTERY

* First it was a downtown golf course. Now it's psychoanalyzing the Almighty. What next?

First off, it isn't easy trying to figure out why God does some things.

But here's the way I look at it:

Anyone who can put together a golf course right here in downtown River City probably has enough time on his hands to analyze the Almighty.

Let me explain.

There are some things happening in my yard right now that defy explanation. As far as I'm concerned, anything that can't be understood by a human must fall into the realm of divine happenstance.

Not that I have any inside track to God or anything like that.

I mean, God hasn't been able to figure me out either.

I'm sure God has wondered more than once why a kid with glasses who never learned to whistle by putting his fingers in his mouth would want to learn to play the piano.

God made us. He has never tried to explain us.

But look at all the ways we have tried to dissect him.

When I saw the grass creeping into the flower garden on the sunny side of the yard, I knew God was having a field day.

I created this flower bed almost three years ago. I carefully removed the sod. I built a rock retaining wall. I put in black dirt. I planted and watered and fertilized and tended, all with modest results.

I even edged the grass along the top border of the flower garden.

A few feet away, the grass still hasn't fully recovered in the area around the new water meter the city decided I needed over a year ago. The grass is downright stubborn.

Or is it one of God's tricks? One of his little diversions whenever he gets tired of keeping planets on track?

You see, the grass is rapidly spreading back into my flower garden where, of course, I don't want grass. But the grass won't even creep into the raw clay around the new water meter.

It's times like this when I wonder what God did on the eighth day.

You know what I mean?

The Bible makes a big deal out of God's performance on the first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth days. Pretty impressive, if you ask me. On the seventh day, we're told, God rested.

You think God's muscles ached as much as mine after I spent all of the Saturday of Labor Day weekend putting new trim around the four rooms of our house with hardwood floors where the floors and walls meet? Probably not.

So what did God do on the eighth day? Or the ninth?

On one of those days he said something like, "Let's see what it takes to get Joe's goat."

And that's when he made grass grow in my flower garden but not around the new water meter.

Another little joke of God's -- he probably got to this one about the 14th or 15th day -- was his tomato-plant caper.

I grew up on a farm. Each spring we planted a couple of dozen tomato plants. By July we always had enough tomatoes to keep Heinz afloat for another year or two.

My wife (daughter of the champion tomato gardener in her hometown) and I have tried at various times to grow our own tomatoes. We haven't ever had much luck, even though we watered and fertilized and tended. We even staked the tomatoes. Or put then in cages. And mulched too.

This year, I put two tomato plants in the middle of the new flower garden on the sunny side of the yard. I decided at the outset that the tomatoes would not get much tending from me. If they were going to get much attention at all, it would have to come from God.

I guess what happened is this: God was fooling around making the grass grow where I didn't want it to grow. He must have seen those poor tomato plants crawling on the ground between the tulips and columbine and daisies and zinnias and chrysanthemums and snapdragons and geraniums and that other stuff I don't know the name of.

Those two tomato plants have given us more than two dozen tomatoes so far, not counting the ones the birds pecked holes in to get a little moisture during these recent blazing days.

So here's what I'm wondering. I'm wondering if I should put a dozen or so tomato plants in the flower garden on the sunny side of the yard next spring. And take care of them properly.

What do you think?

I know what I think. I think God took care of my plans for next year's tomato harvest on about the 27th day. Which is why he has that big grin on his face.

How come there isn't anything in the Bible about that grin?

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.