One Monday morning, a children's song kept playing in my mind. The song floated into my thoughts, not because I felt like singing, but because it described my plight.
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With deadlines looming, I needed to write. Instead, I had prepared a gourmet breakfast (of cereal and toaster pastries), cleaned the kitchen, made the bed, washed my face, brushed my teeth and washed a load of clothes. Still needing to shower and dress before sitting down at the computer, I was folding shirts when I found myself humming: "Here we go round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush ... .”
Children dance happily around imaginary mulberry bushes as they sing this little ditty. Without dancing, we all go round mundane mulberry bushes every day. We tackle chores that demand our attention, sap our time and ever need to be done again.
Having fixed breakfast, I cannot expect that one meal to hold my family for life. Having brushed my teeth, I can't throw away my toothbrush, declaring, "Well, that's finished.” Having washed every stitch of dirty laundry in the house, I can't sell the washer and dryer. Sigh.
How frustrating to keep redoing the same tasks.
How enlightening to discover two phrases that leap out from Romans 8. They announce that creation is "subjected to frustration” because of its "bondage to decay.” Ah, yes: "bondage to decay.” Left to themselves, things naturally devolve into a worse condition.
Every year, my husband and I struggle to maintain a yard nice enough to keep the neighbors from all going together to buy us a privacy fence. Continued work produces a lawn that's passable. But should we decide not to do that upkeep this year, our yard will not evolve into a well-manicured garden. It won't even remain passable. It will quickly yield to overgrowth and weeds.
Bondage to decay produces frustration when we see "emptiness as to results.”
Day after day, we go round and round — maintaining our bodies, our relationships, our financial records, the places we live and work, the stuff we own. Imagine how much time we'd have to get on with life if we never again had to bathe or wash hair or do any other personal upkeep chore.
Ah, but imagine how we'd all look and smell and feel if we stopped doing those things.
Therein lies the rub. We may not make progress when we go round mulberry bushes, but we do get somewhere.
R.S. Duncan, former governor of an English prison built in 1594, suggested that female prisoners at Wakefield created the song, "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush,” while walking with their children around a mulberry tree that still lives in the prison yard.
Moms in bondage, subjected to frustration, sang as they circled a tree day after day, clasping their children's hands. Those moms were accomplishing far more than could be tangibly measured. Yet, surely they longed for the day they could take their children far beyond that circular path.
In a decaying world, mulberry-bush tasks restore order, re-establish cleanliness and rebuke chaos. Yet, they can never fully conquer the decline that overtakes everyone and everything.
Thus, they leave us frustrated, longing for a day when endless cycles of maintenance stop.
Romans 8:21 promises such a day. It announces a moment when "the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”
In that moment, all who have walked, clasping the hand of Father God, will run free, circling the mulberry bush no more.
Deborah Brunt is an author and women's missions and ministry specialist. The "Keeping the Faith” column invites contributions by Oklahoma ministers and religious leaders. To be considered, e-mail columns of about 500 words to chinton@oklahoman.com or mail to Religion News, The Oklahoman, P.O. Box 25125, Oklahoma City, OK 73125.
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