Flight Paths

A wren perched on a branch in a nearby oak sapling as I sat by the fire pit one morning reading.  I did not know he was there until he started singing as only wrens can—clear and lovely and loud, especially for such a small bird.  I knew I would never see him, but I “sang” back anyway.  You don’t have to be able to whistle to sing to a bird, evidently.  I just copied his pitch and timbre the best I could and sort of “trilled.”  Immediately he answered back.

            We sang back and forth to each other for at least five minutes, then I had to get up to poke the fire, and he flew.  Not ten minutes later he was back in the same tree, singing.  I answered, and here we went once again, singing back and forth for several minutes.

            I have done that with other birds as well.  Just imitate their songs, and they will sing right back.  Even if you deviate a little, perhaps eight short phrases instead of nine or ending on a high note instead of a low, they will recognize it and return your call.

            I am more than happy to sing to a bird.  It still puzzles me why it is so hard for me to talk with my fellow human beings, especially about spiritual things—at least I know what they are saying to me.  Particularly when they start the conversation, why shouldn’t it be easy to simply answer?

            Birds are not judgmental, you say.  Trust me, birds are extremely judgmental.  If you don’t say what they want to hear, or if you say it too loudly or from too close a position, they will simply up and fly away. 

            And really, isn’t it easy to find something that most humans will talk about? 

            If you are standing in line and the service is slow, what do you usually talk about with the person behind you?  “They really are busy today.” 

            If you are waiting for a bus and it’s about to rain, what do you usually say?  “Hope that bus gets here before the rain does.” 

            I was checking out at a grocery store the morning of our last anniversary, having laid crabmeat, baby greens, rib eye steaks, shallots, lemons, yellow fingerling potatoes, cremini mushrooms, Granny Smith apples, pecans, and vanilla Haagen-Dazs on the counter.  A man I had never seen in my life walked up behind me in line, took one look at the bounty lying there and said, “Man, I want to go home with you tonight!”  Before I finished checking out I found out that his wife had died two years before and that the next week would have been their fortieth anniversary.

            And we can’t talk to people.

            We won’t talk to people, even when they start the conversation.  Try singing back in his tune instead of ramming another one down his throat.  Before long you can begin to deviate a little, and gradually get your points in.  Isn’t that what Jesus often did? 

            “Can I have a drink of water?” He asked a woman at a well.   Soon they were talking about spiritual water, and soon more people were coming to hear Him.

            Don’t ignore the wrens in your life.  Sing back and make a new friend, and perhaps a new brother.

All your works shall give thanks to you, O Jehovah; and your saints shall bless you.  They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom, and talk of your power; to make known to the sons of men his mighty acts, and the glory of the majesty of his kingdom, Psalm 145:10-12.

           

Dene Ward

Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name…

              Most of the people I know begin their prayers addressing God as Father.  If you think about what you pray, that word “Father” should color your whole life.  To a Jew the father was the authority figure in the home.  His word was law, and the family obeyed.

            For I have chosen [Abraham], that he may command his children and his household after him…Gen 18:19.

            He said to them, “Take to heart all the words by which I am warning you today, that you may command them to your children, that they may be careful to do all the words of this law, Deut 32:46.

            Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the  discipline and instruction of the Lord, Eph 6:4.

            One who manages his own household competently, having his children under control with all dignity, 1Tim 3:4.

            Yes, a father is more than an authority figure, but these passages show us that is an important part of his role.  This is what bothers me:  our culture is doing its best to remove that part of the job from the father.  How many strong fathers do you see depicted on television?  Most of them, if any, are on the classic channels or old movies.  Today’s TV father is hardly more than an incompetent buffoon.

            Understanding authority is basic to understanding submission, a hallmark of discipleship.  Even more important, understanding authority means you will be less likely to err in your relationship with God.  God meant that the father in the family be one way the children were to learn about that Ultimate Authority.  Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the LORD your God disciplines you, Deut 8:5.  Fathers, when you do not live up to the role God has put you in, acting as the authority figure who must be obeyed, who controls and disciplines, who raises up his children, you are responsible for any misunderstanding your child may have about what he can get away with in his relationship to God.

            When you tell him to do something and then do not punish him for disobeying you, you are telling him he can get away with disobeying God.

            When you allow her to wrap you around her finger and get whatever she wants, you are teaching her that God will let her do it her way too, even if it isn’t His way.

            When you allow them to sass you, to talk back or otherwise disrespect you, you are telling them it’s just fine to treat God that way.

            When your children get older, they will disregard plain commands in the Bible.  They will say things like, “But God wouldn’t mind if I…”  They will believe they can finagle their way out of Hell on Judgment Day because they finagled their way out of any orders you gave them, or because you were too weak to make a stand, or because you were afraid they wouldn’t love you, or any number of other excuses you might make. 

They can blame it all on you and what you taught them about a Father’s role, and they will be right, but it won’t help either of you in the end.

Maybe it even says a little bit about how YOU perceive your Father in Heaven.

It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it, Heb 12:7-11.

Dene Ward

            We talked a few weeks ago about that difficult conversation you must have with your spouse—about how he wants to be cared for should he become unable to make those decisions himself, about what treatments he does and does not want, and even about the handling of his physical tabernacle after he is called home.  It is not an easy subject and the longer you wait the more difficult it will become.  But God expects this of a wife who ”does him good and not evil all the days of her life.”

            A few have asked and yes, we have had that conversation.  At this point it is still just a “someday” so it was relatively easy.  We even managed a joke or two to relieve the tension.   Another ten years and that might not have been the case.  Give yourselves the same gift.

            There is another conversation you need to have, the one with your parents.

            First we are going to presume that those who bother to read this already understand their obligation to their parents and are willing to do so.  Jesus seemed to presume that God’s people understood that responsibility himself (Mark 7:9-13).

            The difficult thing in this case is recognizing the time when the roles have made a complete reversal, when you might need to make the decisions for your parents instead of allowing them to make them.  It will not be easy.  They may even resent it.  But think about this:  at one point in your life, they made all the decisions for you and many of them were difficult.  You ought to know from your own parenting experience that children change your life and your schedule, that they become the first and last things on your mind day and night, that you sometimes cry long and hard as you decide to do things you know they need but will not like and that may even effect your relationship with them.  It comes with the job.  That’s what parental responsibility is.

            Now take every one of those things and turn it toward your care for your elderly parents.  It may change your life, your schedule and your priorities.  That’s the way it is and as it should be—you did the same thing to them the day you cried your first lusty little cry.  You may have to give up parts of your life for them—just the way they gave up things to raise you.  And you may need to go against their wishes for their own good, even if it makes them angry.  That is NOT disrespecting your parents.  That is taking on the responsibility of their care.

            A few suggestions.  If your parent is the independent sort, you may need to be the one who says, “You can’t live alone any longer.”  She may beg you not to take her into your home or put her into assisted living or whatever option you might choose, but if her balance is poor, if she can no longer see to her basic needs, if her mind is not clear enough to take her medications properly, then it may just be that difficult time.  It is not a sign of respect to allow her to live in filth because she can no longer clean up after herself—it is actually a danger to her health and the ultimate indignity.  If she falls easily, who will be there to call for help, or will she lie there for hours until you come to make your regular check on her?  If she cannot cook any longer, how will she get the proper nutrition?  Would your parents have allowed any of that to happen to you as a child?  Then why would you allow it to happen to them and call it “respecting their wishes?”

            Go to her doctor’s appointments and find out exactly what the doctor says, not what she reports that he has said.  She may forget something or simply get the information wrong due to an unclear mind.  AND TELL THE DOCTOR EXACTLY WHAT IS HAPPENING AT HOME.  He may make a decision based on seeing her for a five or ten minute appointment that would be completely different if he talked to her for twenty or thirty minutes.  You need to tell him if she doesn’t take her medicine as he prescribes.  You need to tell him if she repeats the same thing every thirty minutes.  He needs to hear that she can no longer perform simple tasks like putting toothpaste on her toothbrush or deciding whether she needs a spoon or a fork to eat soup.  You are not tattling—that’s a playground term.  You are taking on the responsibility God expects from you to care for a parent, and you are doing it even when it might cost you that parent’s goodwill for a while.  Someone has to be the adult when she no longer can be, and that someone is you.

            Get a list of her medications.  What will happen if you make an emergency run to the hospital and you cannot tell them what she is taking?  If she is unable to do so, the proper care may be delayed or the wrong care may result in disaster because no one had that information.

            So talk about it now.  Ask her (or him) if, when the time comes, she might like to live with you or another sibling, or whether she would prefer assisted living.  And recognize that things can change.  My grandmother lived 98 years.  By the time she needed that care, my father was ill and my mother was his caregiver 24/7.  She could not take her mother in, too, so assisted living was the only way to go.  Talk about possibilities now, before the decisions are hard. The longer you wait, the more heartbreaking it will be.  And since when has God ever accepted ignorance as an excuse? 

But if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show godliness to their own household and to make some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God, 1Tim 5:4.

Dene Ward

            Garden season is nearly over down here in Florida.  A few months ago I transplanted my herb seedlings from cups to the herb bed.  We made the first transplant in March from the peat plugs we had placed the seeds in, to larger cups. We always write the type of plant on the cup so if they get mixed up, we will know what we are working with.  Some of the cups were clear plastic and the dark potting soil made it difficult to read the black marker writing on the outside.  Yet I could see “Sweet Ba” and since the majority of the plugs were herbs, I was positive they were “sweet basil” plants.  

            Imagine my surprise when, after planting the plants, I picked up two of the now empty clear cups and was able to see “Sweet Banana” on the side.  Two of those five plants were banana peppers, not basil!  So I dug those two out and took them to the main garden, transplanting them yet again, this time into the pepper row.  I double-checked all the cups, and yes, there were only two.  The others were either Sweet Basil or Marseilles Basil.

            That evening as I showed Keith the herb bed and told him the story, he walked around and looked at the basil from a different angle.  ‘’You know,” he said, “those three plants look like peppers too.”

            “Impossible,” I told him.  “I was very careful when we transplanted them to write what each plant was on the outside, and those are basil!”  Besides, I thought to myself, you are a vegetable gardener, not an herbalist.  You don’t even know what half these things are.

            Then I leaned a little closer—well, actually a lot closer.  Those leaves were a little different, a bit more spade-shaped, but then French basil looks much different than Italian too.  Finally I reached down and rubbed a leaf between my thumb and forefinger, and lifted them to my nose.  I should have been knocked over by the strong smell of basil.  Instead I got maybe a little whiff of “green” smell, nothing more.  They were indeed pepper plants.

            I wonder how many times we are too sure of ourselves.  We know what we know, we know how we got that knowledge, and we know that we know more than most, so how can we be wrong?  We have believed this thing for years.  Our parents or some highly respected teacher taught us.  It cannot possibly be wrong.

            So there we sit with peppers in our herb bed.  Peppers are good to have.  I cook with them a lot.  But when it comes time for a Caprese salad they are totally out of place, and I would like to see anyone try to make pesto with them.  Even if I am positive they are basil, the facts won’t change, and I will simply look ignorant to those with unbiased vision.

            Don’t get too sure of yourself.  Be willing to listen.  Be willing to double-check anything and anyone, including, and most especially perhaps, yourself.

The Almighty—we cannot find him; he is great in power; justice and abundant righteousness he will not violate. Therefore men fear him; he does not regard any who are wise in their own conceit, Job 37:23,24.

Dene Ward

            Have you ever apologized to anyone?  Let me rephrase that.  Have you ever apologized in the Biblical way?  You mean there is a difference?  I think there is a huge one.

            The first two definitions of “apology” in my Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary are 1} a formal justification; a defense; and 2) an excuse.  The original word is Greek, apologia.  Paul used it in Acts 22:1 and 25:16 when he made his “defense” at his trials.  Understand this, in no way was he admitting wrong, and none of us would have expected him to.  He was in trouble for preaching the gospel.  He was defending himself, giving “a formal justification.”  That is not the kind of apology I am talking about either.

Yet that is exactly the way most of us apologize—we defend ourselves.  We say, “I’m sorry you got hurt,” placing the fault on the other person, instead of “I’m sorry I hurt you.”  We say, “If I did anything wrong, I’m sorry,” as if to call in question the one we are “apologizing” to.  We give excuses for why we did what we did to make sure everyone knows “it wasn’t my fault.”  We do everything we can to avoid admitting wrong.

            Webster finally gives this as his last definition:  “An admission of error accompanied by regret.”  More to our point, this is the definition Jesus gives:  if he sin against you seven times in the day, and seven times turn again to you, saying, I repent; you shall forgive him.  Luke 17:4.  If he “turn again to you saying, I repent.”  No defense, no excuses, no justification, just “I was wrong.”  Have you ever apologized that way?

            I daresay most of us have not.  Yet that is exactly the way we are to apologize to God too.  Have you? Or do we, in our prayers, justify ourselves with phrases about being “only human,” or about “how hard it is, Lord,” or even “how mean he was to me first—you know he provoked me, Lord.”  What God expects from us is change for the better, Vine’s definition of the word.  That necessarily involves admission of guilt.  If not, why would we need to change?  And that is the same word Jesus used in Luke 17: 4.  “I repent,” plain and simple.

            So I ask you again, have you ever truly apologized in the Biblical sense, what Jesus called “repentance?”  The next time you begin with, “I’m sorry,” just stop after that second word.  Don’t allow yourself excuses or justification.  Just apologize.  You cannot correct error in your life without admitting it first, and once it’s been admitted, if you truly are a child of God, the responsibility to change cannot help but affect you.

God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble, James 4:6, 1 Peter 5:5.

Dene Ward

            I was walking out to spray the periwinkles one recent afternoon.  Those beautiful little flowers wilt easily in the heat, and we have found that several cool mists a day can keep them alive.  Lately the heat has been especially oppressive, highs in the upper 90s with a heat index of 110.  Stepping outside is like stepping into an oven, one with steam vents, so frequent spraying is necessary.

            As I rounded the corner something off to the side jumped.  I stopped immediately.  In our area, especially in the afternoon shade, when something moves, you stop and do not continue on until you have identified it.  Whatever it was had also stopped.  I took one more step and it moved again.  Something very small jumped up to the huge live oak on the east side of the house and clung to the trunk.  I backed up slowly, then turned around and went for the binoculars.

            When I came back it moved again, and this time I realized it was flying, sort of.  Even though it was only ten feet away I could not tell what it was until I had focused the lenses on the rough taupe bark.  It was a tiny brown puffball of a bird.  I stepped closer and this time two flew.  Another step and I saw a third. Then a wren sang above my head and I turned to see two full grown adults watching from the roof line.  Now I was sure.  That scraggly nest on top of the push broom hanging in the carport had managed to produce babies after all—at least three. 

            About that time Magdi came to investigate.  Any time I stand still and she notices, she comes to my side.  I think she is in protector mode, assuming I have seen something dangerous.  All the babies flew then and she gave chase. The last one was not quite as adept at flying.  It barely made it to the handlebars of the push mower in the smaller shed.  Keith had come out by then to see too.  Quickly he called her off.  She can chase down all the rattlesnakes and water moccasins she wants to, but a baby wren is off limits.  We watched a few more minutes, keeping rein on the dogs, then managed to get them away, interested in something else so the baby birds would be safe—at least from two Australian cattle dogs.

            Isn’t that what God has promised us?  Not that we will never be tempted; not that we will never have trials and tribulations, but that He will keep watch and there will never be more than we can handle.  The Lord is faithful who will not allow you to be tempted above that which you are able to bear, 1 Cor 10:13.  He is always watching over us, ready to shoo the Devil away if things get too difficult. 

            Still, it is up to us to resist.  It is up to us to endure.  He won’t do that for us—we have to flap our own wings and fly away.  I am certain that last little wren learned to fly a little better that day, beating those wings faster and harder as the danger approached, a danger a hundred of times bigger and heavier than it was.  The next time it will be easier.  If we are not there, it will stand a better chance.

            But God is never “not there.”  He knows the limits of our endurance.  He knows what we need to grow strong.  He knows how to keep the dangers away from us far better than we can keep the dogs away from those baby wrens.  We had to go inside eventually and leave them to themselves, but God will never leave us alone.  The Lord Himself learned how to endure and He will help us any way He can. 

            When things get tough, flap your wings a little faster and trust.

I will lift up my eyes unto the mountains: from where shall my help come?  My help comes from Jehovah who made Heaven and earth.  He will not suffer your foot to be moved; He who keeps you will not slumber.  Jehovah will keep you from all evil, He will keep your soul.  Jehovah will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forever more, Psa 121:  1-3,7,8.

Dene Ward

            We stayed with our young grandsons a couple of months back, and one evening two year old Judah found three small bins, about the size of the largest coffee cans these days, and summarily emptied them one by one.  Small figurines, farm animals, blocks and other toys covered the family room floor.  He stood there looking around with obvious satisfaction, lifted his hands in the air and, with a big grin on his face, proclaimed, “I made a mess!”

            Then, surprising us both, he began to pick up each and every tiny toy and place them in the back of his dump truck, the big one he can sit on and push with his feet, until every toy was off the floor.

            “What a good boy!” I exclaimed.  Naively, as it turned out because he immediately knelt before the truck and began tossing the toys over his shoulders with both hands until once again they were scattered everywhere.  Again he looked on his work with satisfaction, then began picking them up and starting over.   This must have occurred five or six times before it began to bore him, but for a while there, “Making a Mess” was the game of the hour and he was quite good at it.

            Do you know any mess makers in the church?  You know, the ones who ask questions in class that are deliberately designed to foil the teacher’s carefully laid out lesson and confuse the newcomers; the ones who enjoy starting a discussion they know will end in arguments; the ones who delight in pulling people aside, especially teachers and preachers, and “setting them straight” about some detail that doesn’t even matter; the ones who pride themselves on taking the opposing view, not because it is the right one, but because they enjoy a stir.  They might as well stand in the middle of the room with my two year old grandson and proclaim, “I made a mess.”

            What does Paul say about them?  They “quarrel about words to no profit.”  They participate in “irreverent babble.”  They engage in “foolish and ignorant controversies.”  They have “an unhealthy craving for controversy”—indeed they can hardly control themselves when they see certain subjects coming up.  That lack of self-control comes because they are “depraved in mind.”  In short, these people thrive on making messes.  They live to cause trouble.  They even brag about their tendency to do these things. 

            And why is it so bad?  Their actions “subvert souls.”  They “lead people to more and more ungodliness.”  Their foolishness “eats like a gangrene.”  It “genders strife.”  It serves only to “produce envy, dissension, slander, suspicion…and constant friction.”  It troubles the new Christians and “unsettles minds.”

            At least my two year old grandson’s activity did not hurt anyone.  It was entirely appropriate for a child his age.  What excuse does a middle-aged mess-maker have?  He might as well go play with the babies.

 

But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless. As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned.  Titus 3:9-11

(Passages quoted in the body of the article:  1 Tim 6:4,5; 2 Tim 2:14,16,23; Acts 15:25.)

 

Dene Ward

Dear TV and Movie Producers and Advertisers of same,

    I grew up watching television.  But now I find myself completely disgusted by what you are giving me as entertainment.  May I please offer a few suggestions?

    I am not a prurient adolescent, so please dispense with the sexual innuendo and bathroom humor.  I am far more mature and sophisticated than that.  Most of the people I know are.  I am relatively well-educated, so please come up with words with more than four letters.  They have already worn out their shock value, and what other use are they?  All they do is turn me off, which means I turn the knob off.

    Please give me role models I can identify with, admire, or aspire to.  Give me a father figure who is not an idiotic doofus, one who can make rational decisions and does not need his wife, and certainly not his children, to pull him out of the messes he makes of their lives week after week.  Give me a mother figure who does not treat her husband like a child or demean him to her friends, but respects him; who is not a preacher for the ultra-liberal left, who understands that selflessness and sacrifice for her family is not a fault to be overcome, and can communicate with her family without a martyr complex.  Give me children who respect their parents and obey them without eye-rolling, sass, and deeply heaved sighs of frustration.  

    Tell my children the truth not the fairy tale of “happily ever after.”  Show my children that one talk about condoms does not make teen pregnancy a breeze.  Show them that drugs are not that easy to overcome once they are hooked.  Tell them that there is no such thing as “safe sex” outside of heterosexual monogamy, that AIDS is not the only, or even the most common, sexually transmitted disease out there, and that they could easily end up living the rest of their lives in relentless pain, unable to marry and have children till the day they die.  Tell them that the same self-control we expect of them in regard to stealing and murder is just as viable when it comes to sexual self-control.

    Teach them something called integrity and character instead of looking out for number one and doing what you can get away with.  Teach them that whatever they do affects someone else.  Do you know how many times my probation officer husband has sat across the table from inmates who were shocked to hear that their shoplifting raised the prices that their dear old grandmothers had to pay?  No one taught them simple economics.  No one told them that what they did was a reflection on the women who raised them.  “I don’t know your mother,” he often says to them, “except what I see in you.”  You would be surprised how many hardened criminals sit there with tears running down their cheeks at those words.  Too bad you didn’t say any of those things a long time before he did.  

    And tell me this—would you ever pepper dialogue with the phrase “Oh my Allah!” or “Oh my Buddha!” or “Oh my Vishnu!”?  Or would you never dare in this age of political correctness to cause offense to someone’s religious beliefs?  So why must I listen to you disrespect my God?  Or is it, as seems to be the case over and over, that discrimination against Christians doesn’t count?

    Speaking of Christians, show me practicing Christians who are neither fire-breathing, insane radicals nor hypocrites.  Show me people who live what they believe—quietly and selflessly serving others and living moral lives.  I can show you hundreds of families in just my limited circle who do.  Why can’t you find any?

    I am not the only one out there who would like these things.  A good many of us are tired of seeing sex used to advertise hamburgers and shavers and suave urbanity to advertise liquor and beer.  Let me tell you—the most interesting man in my world is not an arrogant, beer-swilling womanizer and no man should expect me to come running just because he gave me the eye across a boxing ring.  My standards are much higher than those.  My friends feel the same way.  We’re tired of having to battle an entire culture in order to teach our children how to be decent people.  Not a few have turned their TVs off.  They have made the decision to boycott businesses who promote themselves in such irresponsible ways, businesses whose only interest is the bottom line.  

    And to those who are saying amen, I am calling on more of you to do something tangible to show your displeasure--not violent, not illegal, but something that will make an impact that businesses care about—their profits.  Write a letter, using calm words, good words, not indecent ones.  Don’t become what you are opposing.  Then follow up.  Turn off that television, stop watching those movies, don’t buy those products or patronize those establishments.  You know who and what they are as well as I do, you’ve just been ignoring this issue because it would put a crimp in your style.  Maybe it’s time you sacrificed something.  You know who it’s for.  Aren’t they worth it?  Isn’t HE worth it?

 Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead reprove them.  Eph 5: 11.

Dene Ward

Every other morning in June I stepped outside into the morning steam of dew rising off the grass, head and eyes shielded from the bright sunshine, and carried a five quart plastic bucket to our small stand of a dozen blueberry bushes.  It always amazes me how the morning temperature can be twenty degrees cooler than the afternoon’s, yet within minutes the perspiration is rolling from hairline to chin.  Even the dogs refuse to accompany me, though a shade tree stands within mere feet of the blueberries.  They sit on the carport, their bellies flat against the still cool cement and watch, probably commenting to one another about how silly humans can be.
 
   It was so uncomfortable one morning, and the blueberries so plenteous, their weight bending the boughs in deep arcs, that after the first half hour I became a little less careful in my picking.  Often as I reached deep into the interior of a bush where I had seen several plump, ripe, dusky blueberries hanging, I simply wrapped my hand around the clump and gently nudged each one with my thumb.  Berries that are ready to be picked will fall off the stem easily, and usually I pulled out a fistful of perfectly ripe ones.  Once in awhile though, a red one appeared in my palm, and even a white or green one.  Oh well, it certainly speeded up the process to pick that way, then toss out the bad ones, and it’s not like we had a measly crop this year.

    I wonder sometimes if we aren’t too careful in our attempts to reach the lost.  We have a bad habit of deciding who will listen before we ever start talking and our judgments are so different that the ones the Lord made.  He cast his nets into a polluted river, hoping to save as many dying fish as possible; we cast ours into the country club swimming pool, but that is another metaphor for another time.

    Sometimes we come across a blueberry bush with most of the berries still red, not quite ripe for the picking so we pass it by and leave a couple of big ripe ones, just begging to be put into the pie.  It is too much trouble to go after them one at a time.

    Other times we see a bush with quite a few plump ripe berries and instead of just reaching out and grabbing all we can, because there are a few not quite ready, we move to another branch.  No need picking a handful when we might need to throw out half of them.  And so we only reach for the easy ones, the ones that appeal to us because they look like the pictures in the cookbook and are easy to get to.  Those showing a hint of red at the stem end might take a little more effort, a little more sugar in the pie filling.  And because of that we miss some that would give our pie more flavor.

    In another figure Jesus told us to sow the seed wherever we could, not take the time to map it into suitable planting zones.  He said the world is ripe for picking.  “Don’t cast your pearls before swine,” is about people who have had their chance and rejected it, not about us judging another’s suitability to be our brethren.  Where would we have wound up if people had treated us that way?

    Go pick some blueberries.  Grab all you can and let the Lord decide which ones will make the best pie.

But when he saw the multitudes he was moved with compassion for them because they were distressed and scattered, as sheep not having a shepherd.  Then he said to his disciples, the harvest indeed is plenteous, but the laborers are few.  Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest that he send forth laborers into his harvest, Matt 9:36-38

Dene Ward

This is one of our favorite times of the year—the garden is booming and dinner will always be a treat of things we can only enjoy now, when the vegetables are truly “vine-ripened” and the price is perfect—just a lot of sweat.
 
   One night we will have stuffed bell peppers in a fresh tomato sauce with green beans on the side.  The next we will have eggplant parmigiana with a squash casserole on the side.  Later in the week it will be a country veggie plate of butterbeans, sliced tomatoes, roasted corn, fried okra, and a big wedge of cornbread.  Pasta night will feature a fresh tomato sauce with fresh oregano and feta cheese or a simple cherry tomato sauce with fresh basil.  Then there will be the times we try something new, like today’s grilled eggplant and red onion sandwich on a toasted multi-grain bun with lemon aioli and a big slice of tomato plus pita chips and baba ghanoush (a dip of grilled eggplant and tahini) on the side.  As the rest of the vegetables die off, we will still have the Italian plum tomatoes and enjoy a pizza with homemade crust and tomato sauce, plus a few late season peppers and some Italian sausage.  A few nights later, we will do the same thing, but fold it over and make a calzone out of it with the sauce on the side.  Yes, this is one of our favorite times of the year.

    But now we are seeing that it will have to end sometime in the near future.  Maybe it’s the heat, maybe it’s our age, maybe it’s a combination of the two, but all this good food isn’t worth sacrificing our health for, much less our lives.  Someday soon we will have to buy canned and frozen foods at the store like everyone else instead of using the preserved items we have labored over for three months every year.  

    Which all serves to remind us of what we have lost and why.  By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” Gen 3:19.  

We sweat a lot over this garden.  Some days I think it is watered more by us than the rain.  That is as it should be, for sin deserves far worse punishment than that and every one of us has participated in it.  It is by God’s mercy that we plant in the spring when we have a cool breeze and a sun that is not directly over us.  That same mercy grants us a salvation we do not deserve, and the help to make it through a life we have all but ruined from the beginning.  Why should we expect a perfect life now?  Why should we expect that things will always turn out right?  Someone has not been reading the same Bible I have.  It is grace that promises us that there is a perfect place in the future.  Don’t look upon that hope with ingratitude because you cannot have it now.  We have only ourselves to blame.

    But in the midst of the toil, the sweat, the thorns and thistles and weeds, we enjoy a few weeks of some of the best meals in the world—not gourmet feasts, not something concocted by a celebrity chef—but the plain and simple fare that comes straight from the ground and reminds us of the provision God has made “for the just and the unjust,” not because He had to, but because He wanted to.  It also reminds us of the garden we will return to someday, and never have to leave again.  If you don’t have your own garden, head to the farmers’ market this week and remind yourselves that God still loves us.  This is the way it is supposed to be, and it can be again.  It’s up to you whether you get to enjoy it.

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned…But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many…For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ, Rom 5:12,15,17.

Dene Ward