Keith sprayed weed killer in the plot of ground I have designated for a new flower bed.  It worked just fine, weeds and grass wilting and disappearing over the next week or so until it was completely bare.  We had a warm spell just before Christmas and I just noticed that a spot or two of green has erupted, even more obvious in the black ground surrounding it.  What are they?  Florida betony, a ground cover that spreads through a web-like array of white roots. 

            I think there are two lessons here—when you take out all the bad in your life, you had better fill it up with good fast or you will just have more room for evil to flourish.  Jesus told his own parable about that—the house that was swept clean and the demons who moved into it, Matt 12:43-45.

            But did you know this?  “Weed killer” is really a misnomer.  It is “plant killer.”  Most of those sprays cannot differentiate between one green thing and another.  They don’t look for dollar weed and avoid the petunias.  You have to be careful with the weed killer.

            Too often we are not as careful as we should be when spraying the spiritual weed killer.  In our zeal to rid the world of false teaching and sin, we can do a fine job of killing the new plants too.  Just as a policeman is taught to be careful of who is standing behind the fleeing criminal before he shoots, we must be careful of innocent bystanders who may be caught in the crossfire. 

            Knowledge carries with it great responsibility in how we use it.  Too often it comes with a lack of experience and wisdom and that ice cold new term, collateral damage, becomes a frightening reality to young souls.  How are we any different from the wolves when our zeal leaves bloodied and broken lambs lying around us in a heap?  Many times what is passed off as zeal is simply a selfish desire to look knowledgeable and strong in the faith.  Even Satan used the scriptures for his own purposes.  Jesus also told a parable about leaving the weeds in the field because they had become so entangled it would have killed the wheat to pull them out, Matt 13:24-30.  He had to restrain his workers who were anxious to go out and rid the world of the enemy regardless who else was hurt.

            None of which is to say that even the wise will never make a mistake.  Knowing when to do what can be a difficult call to make.  Usually the ones who criticize, though, are the ones who sit back and do nothing when the wolves
enter the flock, never placing themselves and their decisions at risk

            Just think about this today: be careful with the weed killer.  At times, when Keith needed to use it in spite of new plants already growing nearby, he has used shields over the tender shoots and reached in closer than usual to the weeds so that he could better control his aim. 
           
             Always be careful with the word of God.  It’s powerful stuff.
 
And he said unto his disciples, It is impossible but that occasions of stumbling should come; but woe unto him, through whom they come! It were well for him if a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, rather than that he should cause one of these little ones to stumble. Luke 17:1,2.
 
Dene Ward

We planted our first garden 41 years ago.  Even though Keith had been brought up with gardens, we were both tyros, especially considering the climate we were in, different from either of our childhoods.  He set me up with all the equipment I would need, and most of which I still use all these years later, canners, mason jars, jar lifters, lids, rings, funnels, sieves, lime, vinegar, canning salt, and cookbooks, I had them all.

              One of the things I knew I wanted to make was a batch of dill pickles.  I love dill pickles.  I could eat a whole jar.  So I looked all over for recipes and found one that was fairly easy.  I did exactly as the recipe said and one afternoon in July lined my shelves with a dozen pints of dill pickles.  The recipe said to let them sit a few weeks, as I recall, so I did, and did not get around to trying them yet. 

              Finally we had company one evening and Keith grilled some hamburgers.  The perfect meal for my pickles, I thought, and proudly set them on the table.  I made a point to put the mason jar on the table so our guests would know they were homemade.  Too bad for me as it turned out.  Keith’s pal took one bite of pickle and tried very hard to keep his face from screwing up, not entirely succeeding.

              “Wow!” he finally choked out.  “These are DIIIIIIILLLLL pickles.”

              I took a bite myself and resolved to not only toss the recipe but every jar in the pantry.  The recipe had called for four tablespoons of dried dill seed per pint.  That’s one-fourth cup, people.  After all these years of experience, I would have looked at that recipe and immediately known something was off, but then I was a newbie and didn’t know any better.

              Ah, but we make the same sort of mistakes as Christians.  But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. Heb 5:14.

              I learned from my mistake with the pickles and tried again, and again, and again, until I finally got it right.  But I would never have gotten it right without all that practice.  That’s what it takes with the Word.  No, it doesn’t take a college degree to understand the Bible and knowing exactly what to do to begin your relationship with Christ is pretty simple, but the Word of God is a profound book.  If all you do is read a chapter a day, you are missing 90% of its power.

              I have seen too many young people, especially those “raised in the church,” spout off simplistic definitions and explanations and think that’s all there is to it, completely missing the depths that can be plumbed with some diligent work.  I’ve seen too many older Christians who have relied on those same one-dimensional catch-phrases instead of growing to the height they should have after all those decades as a Christian that they are so proud of.  And I have seen too many old chestnuts that are patently wrong passed from generation to generation. 

              If reading Hebrews 7 doesn’t send you immediately back to Genesis 14 and Psalm 110, if seeing the word “promise” doesn’t make you instantly check for a reference to the Abrahamic promise, if reading the sermons in Acts doesn’t make you realize exactly how important it is to know the Old Testament, you have not been “exercising your senses” in the Word. 

           Please be careful of anything that sounds too pat, that makes arguments based on simplistic definitions or the spelling of English words (“Godliness is just a contraction of God-like-ness”).  Do not repeat anything you did not check out with careful study yourself.  And if you are still quite young, please check out your understanding with someone who is not only older, but well-versed in the scripture, and be willing to listen and really consider.  Do you know who I have the worst trouble with in my classes?  People who were “raised in the church.”  They are far less likely to even consider that they might be wrong about something and to change their minds than a brand new Christian, converted from the world with a boatload of misconceptions.

            You cannot know too much scripture.  It is impossible to be “over-educated” in the Word.  The more you know, the more motivation you will have to live up to your commitment to God, the better person you will be, and the fewer embarrassing mistakes you will make when you open your mouth. 
 
…put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Col 3:10
 
Dene Ward

We have always shared our garden produce.  We have never had a lot of disposable income, but every summer we have extra beans, peas, squash, cucumbers, corn, cantaloupes, okra, peppers, tomatoes, and melons.  Every trip into services includes handing out bag after bag after bag of whatever we are inundated with that week.

            Once we gave a friend a bag of fordhooks.  Knowing she was a city girl, we did not do so without instructions.

            “You will need to shell them tonight, or if you must wait until tomorrow, then spread them out on newspapers.”

            A week or so later we asked her how she liked the beans.  Her red face and downcast eyes told the story before she said a word.

            “I left them in the bag overnight on the kitchen table and they soured and sprouted.  I’m so sorry.  I thought you were just exaggerating.”

            Yes, we still speak and are still good friends.  In fact, she is not the only one who has ignored our instructions and lost good produce as a result.  All these people help me understand a couple of verses in the book of Hebrews.

            And to whom swore he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that were disobedient? And we see that they were not able to enter in because of unbelief. Heb 3:18-19

            In one verse, the Hebrew writer accuses the Israelites in the wilderness of disobedience and in the next of unbelief.  To him they were one and the same, and my disbelieving non-gardening friends prove the point.  When you do not believe what you are told, you will not do what you are told.

            Now granted, Keith and I are just ordinary people who might possibly be wrong, but you would think that forty years’ gardening experience would make us at least a little credible.

            And certainly God should have been credible to people who saw Him send the ten plagues, part the Red Sea, send water gushing out of a rock, and rain manna night after night.  But people always have an excuse if they do not want to obey.

            “It can’t be that important.”
            “God doesn’t care about such a little thing.”
            “God is merciful and loving.”
            “After all, I have done so many good things.  That ought to count more than this.”

            And so they deceive themselves into believing that the beans won’t spoil.  And their unbelief becomes disobedience, something God has never tolerated for an instant.

            Believe it!
 
For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. Heb 4:2,11
 
Dene ward

This year’s garden has made me even more aware that I am growing older.  The heat makes me woozier than ever before.  The bending over gives me a backache that lasts all day and usually into the night.  My hands no longer have the strength to win the tug of war with most weeds.  And I just plain wear out faster.  We have looked at one another and asked, “How much longer can we do this?”  It’s not the only time we ask that question.

           Will this be our last dog?  Will this one be our last car?  How much longer can we take care of this acreage with a shovel, a tiller, and a chainsaw?  We did, in fact, decide that our last camping trip was probably the “last.”  The drive is harder on us.  The set-up takes longer and longer and more and more energy.  We often wind up just sitting around the fire a whole day afterward to recover.  Then there is the pull down and the drive home, and the seemingly endless unpacking and putting up.  When we found ourselves dreading the next trip, we knew it was time to quit.

            And so I look at our work in the kingdom and think, “How much longer do we have?”  How many more classes will we be able to teach?  How many more “weekends” will I be able to travel and give to large groups of ladies?  And the more I wonder these things, the more I feel like screaming out, “You need to call while you can!  You need to come while I am still able to see my notes and talk!  You need to arrange your schedule and get here if you want anything I have left to give.”  Because I really do want to share it with you, and I never know what tomorrow will bring. 

           I know several other older women who feel exactly the same way.  None of us are getting any younger and it is precisely that problem that gives us so much to share with you—experience only comes with age, but age makes life precarious.
           
           Every day we are closer to the last, and before that, we are closer to an age when our service will become limited, when all we may be able to do is offer to someone younger an opportunity to serve an older brother or sister.  We will eventually become like Barzillai, the wealthy old man who supported David when Absalom rebelled.  As David headed back to the palace, he asked Barzillai to come with him so he could be honored for his loyalty and service in an appropriate way.  But Barzillai said to the king, “How many years have I still to live, that I should go up with the king to Jerusalem? I am this day eighty years old. Can I discern what is pleasant and what is not? Can your servant taste what he eats or what he drinks? Can I still listen to the voice of singing men and singing women? Why then should your servant be an added burden to my lord the king? 2Sam 19:34-35.  But even at 80 he had served as he could, even if all it amounted to was using his wealth and his servants to do for his king, rather than doing the serving himself. 

           It is said of David after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation he fell asleep, Acts 13:36.  As long as we are still alive, there is still a purpose of God to be served—we just have to use a little more creativity in finding it!

           And for those who are young and reading this, your time is running out too.  None of us really knows how long we have left.  “All things being equal” we say about the young outliving us, but in this life nothing is ever “equal.”  I have seen too many young people lose their lives to disease and accident to feel at all comfortable for you.  You need to make the most of your time too.  The purpose God has in mind for you may be a very short one.

           And so it is up to all of us to make the most of the time, to “redeem it” as Paul told the Ephesians.  Do not put off the spiritual things—Bible study, prayer, meditating, serving.  Do not think that “someday” you will be in an easier time of life, a time when you can become a better Christian, a better father or mother, a better husband or wife.  That time will never come unless you make it happen.

           The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away. Ps 90:10 

           It flies faster than you can ever imagine, and if you have not prepared yourself properly, eternity will last longer than you ever thought possible.
 
O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds. So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me, until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come. Ps 71:17-18
 
Dene Ward

Normally a Florida summer begins in May, if not late April.  True to form, the first two of weeks of that month brought temperatures in the 90s.  Air conditioners hummed in every neighborhood.  The tube of sun block sat at the ready whenever we wandered outside to check the progress of the garden, or actually work awhile weeding and fertilizing.  Keith cleaned out the fire pit because summer had arrived.

            Then on May 16 we woke to a temperature of 48 degrees.  The thermometer on our porch never broke 70, and a stiff breeze blew leaves and sand all over the carport.  The moment I stepped outside, I stopped, turned around and headed for the calendar.  Did someone turn back the clock?  No, it was still May, but as the week bore on, we were once again sipping coffee by a fire in the early hours of the day.  Even the sparrows were confused.  They always fend for themselves in the summer, leaving the bird feeder to their avian kin, but a couple of them landed that week and took advantage of the free meal.  This unseasonable weather had everyone mixed up, but we all enjoyed it nonetheless, knowing it would soon disappear and the heat return, as it most certainly has.

            The Bible talks about things being “in season and out of season,” especially preaching the gospel, 1 Tim 4:2.  We have actually lived places where Keith was told that he should not preach about certain subjects.  In one place it was “not the right time” for it, and in the other he was to avoid those subjects “from now on.”  Why?  Because certain people in the audience might not like it.  Did they need it?  Yes, but they might not like it.  Asked when the right time was, the answer was, “I don’t know, but not now.”

            Have you noticed that preaching styles change about as much as fashion styles?  Some of the preaching I heard as a child would never be accepted today.  Some of the preaching I hear nowadays would never have been accepted when I was a child.  That tells me that what makes something in season or out of season is the hearers, not the preachers.  We have a couple of good examples in the book of Acts.

            After preaching a sermon on the day of Pentecost that accused the listeners of murdering the Son of God, they were “pricked in the heart.”  They said, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?”  They experienced a heartfelt repentance and obeyed the command to be baptized (Acts 2).  That preaching must have been “in season.”

            Stephen experienced the opposite.  After a sermon accusing his listeners of being “stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears,” and “resisting the Holy Spirit” they were “cut to the heart.”  (Acts 7)  Was Stephen’s sermon any tougher than Peter’s?  No, not a bit.  Both preachers hit what they aimed at—the hearts of the listeners, one audience being “pricked in the heart” and the other being “cut to the heart.” But the reactions were certainly different.  Stephen’s audience stoned him to death.  I guess that sermon was “out of season.”

            Too many times we expect the preacher or teacher to perform according to our rules and expectations, forgetting that he has a higher authority to answer to.  God warns him that he will be held responsible for the souls he speaks to if he doesn’t tell them what they need to hear.

            The next time we think a sermon is “unseasonable,” remember, that probably means we need to listen to it.  Our reaction is not the preacher’s fault, but our own.  We are responsible for our hearts.  It is just as wrong to tell a preacher not to preach when it is “out of season” as it is to withhold the gospel from a good and honest heart, a time when it is “in season.”  That’s what Paul told Timothy.  When we do so we may be condemning souls to eternal death, along with our own.
 
I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.  2 Tim 4:1-5.
 
Dene Ward

Canning tomatoes is one of the more difficult garden season chores.  You wash each and every tomato.  You scald each and every tomato.  You pound ice blocks till your arms ache in order to shock and cool each and every scalded tomato.  You peel each and every tomato and finally you cut up each and every tomato.  How many?  In the old days about 5 five gallon buckets full, enough to make 40+ quarts.  Then you sterilize jars, pack jars, and process jars.  Only 7 fit in the canner at a time, so you go through that at least 6 times.

            And you will have more failures to seal with canned tomatoes than any other thing you can.  As you pack them in, pushing down to make room, you must be very careful not to let the juice spill over into the threads of the jar.  And just in case you did that heinous crime, you take a damp cloth and wipe each thread of each jar.  Tomato pulp will keep a perfectly good jar, lid, and ring from sealing.

            In order to have that many tomatoes you must be willing to cut up a few that are half-rotten, disposing of the soft, pulpy, stinky parts—and boy howdy, can they stink!—in order to save sometimes just a bite or two of tomato.  Now that there are only two of us, I usually limit myself to 20 + quarts.  I still put one in every pot of spaghetti sauce, one in every pot of chili, and one in every pot of minestrone, as well as a few other recipes, it’s just that I don’t make as many of those things as I did with two boys in the house.  Now I can afford to be a little profligate.  If I pick up a tomato with a large bad spot, I am just as likely to toss the whole thing rather than try to save the bite or two that is good, especially if it is a small tomato to begin with.  Why go to all that work—washing, scalding, shocking, peeling, cutting up, packing—for a mere teaspoon of tomato?

            But isn’t that what God and Jesus did for us?  For narrow is the gate, and straitened the way, that leads unto life, and few are they that find it. Matt 7:14.

            The Son of God, the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Phil 2:6-8.  And he did that for a half—no!--for a more than half rotten tomato of a world.  He did that to save a remnant, a mere teaspoon of souls who would care enough to listen and obey the call. 

           Sometimes, by the end of the day, when my arms are aching, my fingers are nicked and the cuts burning from acidic tomato juice, my back and feet are killing me from standing for hours, and I am drenched with sweat from the steamy kitchen, I am ready to toss even the mostly good tomatoes, the ones with only a tiny bad spot, because it means extra work beyond a quick slice or two.  Aren’t you glad God did not feel that way about us?  It wasn’t just a half rotten world he came to save, it was a bunch of half rotten individuals in that world, of which you and I are just a few.
 
But what is God's reply to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. Rom 11:4-5

Dene Ward

We kept seeing them on the side of the road—two to three feet high, blue flowers clustered at the top of tall stems with long narrow leaves.  We called them wild irises because that’s what they looked like, and I wished aloud that we had some.  So Keith stopped one afternoon on the way home from work and dug up a few.  I looked them up in my wildflower book and found their true name—spiderwort.  What an ugly name, I thought, and called them my wild irises instead. 

            Then we learned about them.  They spread faster than anything we had ever planted, in places we really didn’t want them, but the worst was this—they were only beautiful early in the morning or right after a rain.  Otherwise those blooms turned black and ugly by noon, earlier in the heat of summer.  If ever there was a fair weather flower, this was it. 

            Just as I misjudged the beauty of those wildflowers, I fear that some of us may be mistaken about how God judges our beauty.  Dressing up on Sunday morning is not what matters to God.  Having a tie on is not what makes a man worthy to serve at the Lord’s Table.  While I dress carefully on Sundays, one of the few times I get to wear a pretty dress these days, it has little to do with whether God thinks I am beautiful.  To God, beauty is seen in faithfulness, in righteous and holy lives, and in kindness shown to others.  In many cases, we don’t look particularly pretty while doing those things. 

            We never look better to God than when we are bruised and bloody from a fight with Satan, battered from overcoming the temptation to sin.  We are pretty when we are clad in old clothes cleaning up after our families, and handsome when plastered with sweat and dirt from doing the yard work for a widow.  We are lovely to God when we sit around in our old blue jeans talking about the Bible to a friend who asked a question, or inviting a neighbor to a Bible study.  We are beautiful to Him when our bodies are thin and our eyes sunken from facing an illness that came only because so many years ago the Devil succeeded with Adam, yet we face it with trust in a God who has a plan.  We are especially gorgeous to Him when our bodies are old and bent, and our hair gray and thin, having lived a life of faithfulness.

            Spiderworts are pretty only when things are easy, only when life is fun.  When that’s over, they live up to their name—black and ugly, a weed everyone could do without.  Don’t make God feel that way about you.
 
I am faint and sore bruised: I have groaned because of the tumult of my heart. Lord, all my desire is before you; And my groaning is not hidden from you. My heart throbs, my strength fails me: As for the light of mine eyes, it also is gone from me. My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my plague; And my kinsmen stand afar off… in you, O Jehovah, do I hope: You will answer, O Lord my God.  Psa 38:8-11,15.
 
Dene Ward

My back and feet were aching and my hands cramped from peeling by the time I finished.  The seals on the pint jars of apple butter popped and I started the clean-up of unused jars and lids, the large pot covered with sticky residue, and the measuring cups and spoons.  Finally it was over. 

            The apple tree had borne far more than ever before.  I had made several pies, a couple dozen muffins and a cake, and canned two dozen quarts of applesauce, a gallon of apple juice, a dozen pints of apple jelly, half a dozen quarts of apple pie filling, and finally a half dozen jars of apple butter.

            As I stood over a sink full of soapy water I muttered, “I hope I never see another apple as long as I live.”  The next spring my apple tree died.

            When it became apparent that we couldn’t save the tree, Keith looked at me and muttered something about not really knowing what that might mean—the fact that I could curse a tree and it up and die for no obvious reason so soon afterward.  Just exactly who, or what, was he married to?

            The county agent saved my reputation.  The tree was planted too close to an oak, he said.  Oaks carry a disease that kills fruit trees, especially apples and peaches.  Sure enough, we soon lost our peach tree too.

            All these years later, the story came up again, and with it a new perspective.  Here I had cursed a tree that bore too much, while the Lord cursed one that bore too little. 

            And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And he said to it, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." And his disciples heard it.  And as they passed by it in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered to its roots, Mark 11:13,14,20.

            You might do as I did at first and wonder why the Lord would expect to find figs when it wasn’t fig season.  Yet every commentator I read said that figs produce their fruit before they leaf out.  When the Lord saw a fig tree fully leafed out, he had every right to expect to see some fruit, even if it was small and green.  As a gardener I know that nearly every plant has at least one “early-riser”—a tomato or pepper or blueberry that ripens before the others.  Even if there was nothing ripe, there should have been plenty of fruit hanging there, gradually ripening on the leafy branches.

            Now how about us?  Is anything ripening on our branches?  Is the fruit of the Spirit perhaps still a little green, but nonetheless visible as we become more and more what he would have us be?  Or are we nothing but leafy show: lots of pretty clothes on Sunday morning but behavior like the rest of the world throughout the week?  Lots of talk in Bible class, but no good works in the community?  Quoting catchphrases to our neighbors, but never opening the Book in our own homes?  More concerned with winning arguments than winning souls?

            The Lord will come looking for figs in our lives, more than likely at a season in which we are not expecting him.  He told us we would recognize false teachers by their fruits (Matt 7:16-20).  What will he recognize about us from ours or will there even be any for him to see?
 
And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God, Col 1:9,10.
 
Dene Ward
             
 

Gardeners know about ladybugs.  These tiny beetles can eat up to 50,000 aphids each in their two to three year lifespan.  That isn’t all they eat.  Leaf hoppers and mites and even some types of plant mildew make a meal for them.  You can buy a supply of ladybugs if you want.  I forget the exact numbers, but you can get several thousand for about $25.  Or you could let a bunch of dandelions grow up between the rows of your vegetables.  Evidently those attract ladybugs, but dandelions in the garden?  I don’t think so. 

            We have never had many ladybugs that I have noticed.  A few days ago though, as I bent to weed the okra yet again, I suddenly noticed on the leaf right under my nose an oval orange bug with black spots on it.  A ladybug!  I looked them up afterward, and I think the most interesting discovery was how they fend off their predators.  They give off a stinky secretion from their joints.  They are the skunks of the insect world.

            Several times in the Old Testament you see the phrase, “They became a stench in the nostrils…”  More than once God’s people began to stink up the place, either to the enemy they defeated by the hand of God, or to God himself when they began to live like their enemies.

            The same thing can happen to us.  I remember when we lived in town and occasionally had one of those knocks on the door.  Usually those folks never came back—not because we were rude, but because we obviously knew the word of God and were not afraid to answer the questions they pose to get your interest.  I think the fact that we had an answer to begin with threw them off track.  One time we saw the same people come down our street a few weeks later.  When they got to our property line, they actually crossed the street so they wouldn’t be walking any closer to us than they had to, then crossed back to get to our next door neighbors.  I guess we had begun to smell.

            Funny how the same thing can smell good to one and not the other.  Paul said, For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life, 2 Cor 2:15,16.  When Paul and his entourage preached, some people liked it and some didn’t.  When we live the word of God in front of people, especially when we speak it, the same thing will happen to us.

            Maybe that makes us ladybugs, saving the world from the pests with the sword of the spirit, the word of God, and saving ourselves the same way—repelling our foes with a smell they simply cannot stand—the sweet aroma of redemption.  Isn’t that a good enough reason to get out your vial of God’s perfume this morning, and become a little more familiar with it?  God is counting on us ladybugs.
 
But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.  2 Cor 2:14.
 
Dene Ward

We love this season.  You never know what will pop up where.

            Several years ago we started planting wildflowers, a patch here one year and a patch there the next, babying them for exactly one summer, then letting them do their own thing.  Every spring we eagerly await the results.  Last year black-eyed Susans sprang up where we had never planted them.  This year rain lilies rose in a larger clump and farther from the original bed than you would have thought possible.  The year before a bright yellow coreopsis suddenly bloomed way out in the field amid nothing but grass.  It’s exciting to see what can happen over the years from just one seed sown in the middle of five acres.

            I have had the same experience lately with my old Bible class literature.  Suddenly I received a drop ship order from one of the Bible book stores to an address nearly 2000 miles distant.  Yet the last name, an uncommon one especially considering the relatively small size of the brotherhood, was familiar.  It was the first name I didn’t know.  Was this the daughter, or maybe the daughter-in-law of a woman I taught thirty years ago?  Imagine that.

            Don’t you think the apostles had the same feelings when, years after they had sown the seed in a rough Gentile town, they had news of another group of disciples, or maybe several groups, in the same vicinity?  The power of God’s word screams out from the growth of the church in the ancient world and the way it changed history itself.

            I have had people who knew my parents in their younger years tell me of the things they did for them, things they still remembered and that obviously meant a lot.  Keith has had people come up to him and say, “I still have that letter you wrote me years ago.  It changed my life.”  And, “I remember that class you taught.  It helped me through a rough time.”

            We have opportunities every day to make a difference in someone’s life.  Too many times we ignore them because we don’t believe anything we say or do will make that much difference.  Let me tell you something.  It isn’t yourself you are demeaning by thinking that way—it’s God’s word and His power through that word.  When you help someone, when you speak a word of encouragement, when you act with kindness in a situation where no one else would have bothered, you are tapping into that power yourself and spreading the grace of God to others.  It may be just the “cup of cold water” Jesus mentions in Matt 10:42, but that cup can change a life. 

            I have lost count of the times people have said to me, “I remember when you…”   You know what?  Most of the time, I don’t remember it, but I thank God for sending some small amount of inspiration for me to say the right thing, even though I was perfectly oblivious at the time.  Truly He helps us in every circumstance.   

            When our lives are over, we should be able to walk out into the field and find little patches of grace that came from some seed we sowed, however inadvertently, years before.  Yellow daisies, white rain lilies, blue bachelors’ buttons, pink phlox, red cypress vines—you never know what you will get when you spread the word with an act of kindness or word of compassion--no matter how small it may seem to you!

            So put on your gardening gloves this morning and start planting.
 
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. Isa 55:10,11.
 
Dene Ward