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Growth Takes Patience

I enjoy gardening. By this time of year, I am busy getting the soil enriched with fertilizer, tilling it, sowing seeds, and setting out bedding plants. So far, I have squash, green beans, and radishes up and thriving, along with several cabbages, bell peppers and tomatoes.  Several weeks ago, I set out an eggplant in a five-gallon bucket, which presently has the beginnings of emerging fruit. It amazes me how God engineered nature to create such voluminous plants that start from the tiniest of seeds!

This season the weather has been quite erratic, shifting from cool or cold weather to summer like temperatures early in the season, then back to frost ridden mornings in whiplash fashion.  Early March it had been so mild I jumped ahead and planted green beans. We had a couple of weeks of 80+ degree temps and then came a frost and freeze. I covered the plants several times, but missed a forecast and did not cover them for the last frost we had. Consequently, the cold killed all those tender plants. I should have paid closer attention to the forecast.

When this happens there is nothing to do but replant and start over. I did, and now the green beans are up and seem to be thriving. Frustrating – yes!  especially when it could have been avoided by either waiting to plant, or giving more care to the young, delicate sprouts. Gardening takes work, patience, and attention to environmental conditions. It can often be wearisome, but the fruit of the labor makes it worth the effort, or at least to me it does.

I think God engineered nature to teach us spiritual truths if we will only pay attention. Galatians 6:7-9 says:  Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.

Do not give up! Had I not replanted my green beans this year, I certainly could not expect to harvest green beans. Sometimes it takes replanting to reap a harvest. Other times it requires more fertilizer or different plants that are better suited to your soil or climate. Figuring this out takes patience and perseverance.

As a church, if we are sowing seeds to please God and not ourselves, God will give the increase. It may take time and a lot of effort but being diligent and pressing on with fortitude will render a harvest if we persevere in love.

Together we press on!  Plant a few seeds by inviting someone to church, sending an encouraging note to one who is hurting, speak words of affirmation to each other, look for the positive, seek ways to be a helper. If we all do our part, God will bring the harvest in His time!

Pastor Keith

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FOCUSED

One of the casualties of aging to which I find myself a victim is the dimming of the eyes.  Ecclesiastes 12 counsels the young person to remember God, their Creator, in their youth before the aging process takes over and various faculties, as listed in verses 1-7, are diminished.

Clear eyesight when we are young may be something we take for granted. However, as we age the realization that our vision is not as sharp as it once was takes hold. “Readers” become standard fare for all intricate tasks. Our once keen laser sharp focus is now blurry and in need of help to restore its youthfulness. That restoration is found through glasses or some sort of rejuvenating surgery. Especially in the early stages of this degenerative eye problem we may be able to fake it and get by, but eventually we must relent and do something to correct the problem.

There is a parallel between physical and spiritual vision. “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus” was written in the early 20th century. The hymn writer, Helen Lemmel, was strongly influenced by the artist and later little-known missionary, Lilias Trotter. Miss Trotter started off as an aspiring artist but early on felt a call from God to reach the lost. She began her ministry by rescuing prostitutes from the streets of London. Later she went to Africa, without missionary funding, and served for over forty years. While there she penned a poem that would greatly influence the writing of the hymn “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus.”  The poem was entitled “Focused: A Story and Song.” 

The poem centers around focusing one’s attentions fully and completely upon God. She writes that Satan knows that if a person uses all their powers of concentration on being led by God’s Spirit, they will have a great intensity and impact upon those to whom they are called to minister. Lilias Trotter, writing in a more formal use of the English language than we are accustomed, shares some timeless insights which could very easily have been written today but with a different accent. She writes: “Never has it been so easy to live in half a dozen good harmless worlds at once—art, music, social science, games, motoring, the following of some profession, and so on. And between them we run the risk of drifting about, the ‘good’ hiding the ‘best’ even more effectually than it could be hidden downright frivolity with its smothered heartache at its own emptiness.”

The “good” hiding the “best” leads us to emptiness.  Could this be true of us today especially as American Christians? Have we sought the “good” while missing the “best”? The chorus of the hymn, which we will be singing in worship this Sunday, says it best.

                Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face,                                                                                                                                        And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.

Keith Pate

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