Lessons from the Compost Pile
Wednesday, September 17, 2025
written by Rev. Leah Quarles
When my mom first started her compost bucket I was appalled. What is this new bucket on the countertop? What treats lay inside? While the outside label claimed chocolate covered caramels awaited inside I knew better than to believe it. One lesson I learned quickly in my household was to never believe the container actually contained its original contents.
Quart of vanilla yogurt? Think again – chopped up pineapple. A small container of spreadable butter? Absolutely not – that would be last night’s green beans. Smuckers jelly? Just kidding – that’s homemade fig spread. And most of all, never, ever believe the giant tub of Country Crock is what it says. Cut up watermelon, yes. Pasta, of course. Come to think of it, I’ve never opened that container to see its original inhabitant. All that to say, when I popped the lid I knew it was unlikely I’d see chocolates but nothing prepared me for what was in there. Rotting food. Organic garbage. What the…..
“It’s a compost bucket!” my mom explained. “It’s gross!” I replied “and it’s on your countertop!” She went on to explain to her squeamish and shortsighted teenager how it’s actually not gross. And how it will actually lead to good things. She led me out the back door, through the backyard. All the way to the beginning of the woods that separated our back yard from the Delaware Canal. She showed me her newly formed compost pile where she dumped the contents of her chocolate covered caramel bucket. This, she explained, would become the nutritious and rich soil that would help our garden grow.
Jeff Chu*, the author of Good Soil: The Education of an Accidental Farmhand had his own experience with compost. He writes,
It was easy to spot all the death – blackened banana peels and spent coffee grounds, a previous season’s fallen leaves and wood chips, moldy zucchini and melon rinds, disintegrating eggshells and leaves of spinach liquefying in the heat...I gave silent thanks for my choice of tool - a shovel, not a spade, all the better to keep my distance from the mess.
Chu came to study at The Farminary at Princeton Theological Seminary. As classes began his first year, he and his classmates stood around a compost pile while Professor Stuckey instructed them to start digging and to “look for signs of life and death and resurrection.” As Chu hesitantly dug around with his shovel, he discovered, “the pile writhed with life: worms and grubs, millipedes and mites. As we went deeper, the colors and textures began to change, and the mixture began to resemble fresh soil.”
Reading Chu’s words reminded me of my own compost lesson over 20 years ago in my family’s kitchen. And it reminded me of what I believe. Mainly that I follow a resurrected Savior. One who rose from death. One who raises the dead. In whom, through my own baptism, I too cross from death to life—into a new life of faith in Jesus and in the love of God. And one of the blessings of this new life is to receive a lens through which we look at the world.
It is easy to look around at the world, especially in recent years, and see death alone. But my faith encourages me to look deeper into the compost pile, to even dig around within it, and hopefully begin to see where God is bringing about new life - for God is a Redeemer and always at work doing just that.
**Jeff Chu will actually be visiting Pinnacle this Fall! Make sure to mark your calendars for his visit on Sunday, November 2, and join us for lunch!