Category: Shore

Planting For The Harvest

Giving More than a 10th

Saturday 4 February 2023

Cold Days,

Time to Plan

And Plant

for the Harvest.

Genesis 28:22

… and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house; and of all that you give me I will surely give one-tenth to you.

2 Corinthians 9:6

The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

Words of Grace For Today

Henri put in a garden. He’d been meaning to do it for years, and now the prices of groceries finally put the fire in him to do it. He wanted a huge harvest, so he tilled up a good two acres of deep, rich soil. Then he bought manure from a neighbour farmer and tilled that in. He marked out the areas, made the lines, and after the last snow in late April he planted seeds of all kinds: corn, peas, beans, asparagus, carrots, potatoes, squash of 5 kinds, pumpkins, melons, sweet potatoes, zucchini, 2 rows each of raspberries, strawberries, and blue berries.

Looking at the huge area he anticipated lots of weeds and he wasn’t into picking them for hours on end, so he went out and bought a small tractor with a harrow that he could adjust to the width of his rows. Then he thought about all the deer and rabbits that would eat out garden before he could harvest it, so he bought fencing materials and built a 12 foot fence all around with the bottom 6 feet a tight woven mesh.

Next he thought about the dry summer that he’d heard were so possible and he built a reservoir for water, a powerful pump, and mobile sprinkler system so he could water the whole garden when it needed it. Then he modified all the eaves troughs on his house, garage, and shop so that the water was collected, filtered, and piped to the reservoir.

Next he realized that a huge harvest would need to be picked, cleaned, and stored, either by freezing or canning most of it. So he built a special insulated and heated shed, adding fresh water and waste water and electricity to it. In it he built a processing ‘kitchen’ for canning and for freezing. Next came two large stand up freezers, and shelves upon shelves for the pantry.

Since he really did not think he was at all interested in spending hours harvesting the garden he hired five high school students for the whole summer. They had helped him with everything starting with the planting. Yet Henri still spoke to everyone and to himself as he had done everything himself.

Francine, an ‘on-again, off-again’ friend of Henri’s for as long as she could remember, had been putting in a garden for decades before Henri finally got around to starting his. She started off with 2 raised beds, each 3 feet by 12 feet, and slowly increase it to a total of 6 last year. Each bed had a gravity watering system for it from a tank she filled when it needed it.

It was a small garden by local standards, but those small beds produced more than any other garden in the area, mostly because she had learned so much through the years and tended to the beds with tender care.

She shared her produce with a number of people in the area, usually in exchange for some good manure for fertilizer or help fencing, tilling, planing, weeding, and harvesting. But she was in her garden working at it more than everyone else combined.

At the end of every year she would tally up her expenses over the grocery store value of her harvest (just her own). She usually came in at about 1/3. Her worse year it was 1/1, and her best had been her third her when it was 1/6.

She met Henri this past summer, and having heard of course about his garden, congratulated him on finally getting around to his dream garden. She asked what he expected his expense-over- harvest would be. He hadn’t stopped to consider that. At home he sat down and calculated out that he’d spent nearly $150,000 on infrastructure, $40,000 on the tractor, $2000 on seeds and another $5000 on 1 each of 5 different fruit trees that should grow in the area. Then he added in the cost of fuel he planned for the summer and the wages of his workers. If he divided the long-term assets over ten years he figured the summer would cost him around $30,000. Then he thought of how much he had spent last year and anticipated spending on the groceries his harvest would replace, that came to about $5000 or so, maybe more with prices rising. Even if he estimated it at $6000 that still meant his ratio was 5/1. He spent five times as much for his large garden than he would get out of it! He nearly had a heart attack!

….

This year, with the increase in groceries, no less that 2 dozen new people had contacted Francine about ‘helping’ in her garden in order to share in the produce, so she invited everyone of them to come on over. Each family built a new raised garden if not 2. One large family built 4. Everyone chipped in as they could with money, materials, fertilizer or muscle to build the new fencing and establish the new beds. The same went for all the work throughout the summer.

….

When the gardens in the area had just started to produce a harvest, the carrots always seemed to come in first, a hail storm hit and wiped out nearly half of Henri’s garden and everyone else’s, except the beds at Francine’s. They were small enough that people had put up a steep-peaked frame work over one or two off them at a time, and with the threat of hail they’d thrown tarps over the frames, anchored them well, and watched most of the hail bounce or rolled between the beds. The ice was a foot deep in places, but when the tarps came off only a few plants had been destroyed by hail that broke through the tarps.

…

Everyone knew (except apparently Henri, and he was just stubborn and a bit slow to pick up on the obvious) that while the Bible said those that plant much will harvest much, it rarely turned out that way in life, not just in the garden, but in all of life.

Makes one stop to think that Jesus’ story is about God ‘planting’ and us getting the benefit of the ‘harvest’ of forgiveness and renewed life! Francine reflected Jesus’ story as well: We receive great bounty so that we can share all we have with others, so that they will live abundantly. Most of all we get to share God’s bountiful, merciful forgiveness, compassion, and healing presence!

The question each day is: what are we planting today, that someone will harvest in the future?

Return to Humble Gratitude

Wednesday 1 February 2023

It’s Not Much, And It’s Everything,

A Snow Crystal Covered Branch

Just Like

Life Abundant.

Zechariah 1:3

Therefore say to them, Thus says the Lord of hosts: Return to me, says the Lord of hosts, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts.

2 Peter 3:9

The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.

Words of Grace For Today

Return, and I will return to you.

The IF-THEN is right there, and that’s not how God works.

Rather God says: I have always been with you, and you have not noticed. I make it possible for you to return to me. This is my standing invitation, return now.

Or now.

Or now.

For God does not want any of us to perish, though we all seem deadset on that being the end for us. Rather God wishes that all of us will repent, return, and discover the abundant blessings God has poured over us since before we were born.

Jesus’ story makes clear to those who will listen, that God wishes for us to live filled with humble gratitude, ready to be sent and be the ones who deliver God’s bountiful gifts to others, so that they may live filled with humble gratitude as well.

Some of us need to survive a car crash, engine failure in a single engine plane, or a terrorist attack (or one or more of a huge number of ‘accidents’ that should have claimed our lives). Others cancer or some other life consuming disease. Others conflict of war or violent crimes. Others being framed, accused, convicted, and destroyed by the scheming of those closest to us, the police, the lawyers, the courts, and the judges, or some other blatant misuse of authority and power. Others need more than life provides and they never surrender to humble thankfulness. Sad.

Others seem to learn from other’s experiences and find humble gratitude early in life and return often to enjoy it in the arms of a loving God.

Whatever it takes for you, may you find humble gratitude your way of being this day. It’s what please God the most.

Giving Up!

Surrendering to God With and For Us

Friday 27 January 2023

The colours of dawn show the glory of God,

whether we see it or not.

Psalms 1:3

They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper.

Philippians 1:9-11

And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that on the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.

Words of Grace For Today

Jonathan worked hard everyday, as he had since he was 5. He remembered what his mother had taught him, that you had to work hard to make it in life. He had definitely wanted to make it in life. First he had wanted to make his mother proud. He may have wished something of his father, but he had left them before Jonathan knew anything about him. Then as he grew older he saw that people with money got to do what they wanted, so he decided that he would have lots of money by working hard.

A quick three years earned him his first degree, another two his PhD and he was on his out working hard everyday. At first he worked for someone else. After a year he figured out that the only way to be wealthy was to have people working for him, so he quit his job and started his own little design and engineering company. Just five years later he had grown it to 1000 employees in 20 different cities. He’d sold that company for his first real billion in his own bank account. He’d invested half in safe stocks and the rest into a new company, this time architecture, engineering, and construction. Within 3 years he had more than 3000 employees in 30 different cities across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Then he’d met Michelle on a worksite in Vereeniging and again on a project outside Dar es Salaam and all the sense of his working everyday dissolved like his nightly antacids in hot water. He’d taken a year to be with her, working every other week or so, getting just as much work done, still adding to his assets and investments, and the value of his company, all privately owned. They’d been married in Cape Town, had a week long honeymoon in Stockholm, Oslo, and Sankt Peter Ording.

Then he’d gotten back to work, even as the children arrived. First Olevia, then Petrus. When he came back from working in Hebron on a new project, his first in Israel, he found Michelle in the hospital. No one knew what made her ill, but she could barely lift her head or hands, and she whispered at most a few words each day. He’d sat by her for 4 straight days, as her condition got worse and worse, until ….

Looking back on the week that had followed, Jonathan could not remember what had happened. He sat on the edge of his hospital bed now. People told him he collapsed at Michelle’s funeral. He had no memory of it at all, or of the previous days in the hospital.

He rubbed his forehead. It did not help the headache or the dizziness. He tried to stand, but the room spun and he sat back down. Minutes later he woke up laying on his bed.

All the money that he had, and he could not save Michelle, and now he could do nothing for himself. Give him a building project and he’d excel, but this! What was this!?

When he found these verses (Psalms 1:3 and Philippians 1:9-11) beside his bed that night, he thought, yes, he’d prospered, but to what good end? He thought his love for Michelle had overflown all limits, and he had acquired great knowledge and wealth. But had he any insight to help himself determine what is best, so that on the day of Christ he would be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness?

It was like another test, and he was failing this one badly.

The pastor that visited his roommate the next morning talked about how we could not do anything good without the Holy Spirit guiding us to do that good. Otherwise it all turned to dust and hopeless evil. We could, of our own freewill, choose to do evil and turn from God; but only God could help us live in God’s good grace.

He was more confused than ever. How could he do what was right if that was impossible? But he could still do what was wrong, because that was fully possible for him?

His roommate got up later that day, and saw that he had not even made it to the bathroom at all that day. He walked over, and saw Jonathan’s confused, hopeless look, and simply made the sign of the cross on his forehead saying, you are marked with the cross of Christ, and you are precious to God. Be at peace.

And then it all changed for Jonathan. He died.

They revived him. A month later he went home. He spent hours, days, weeks and months making no sense at all of what the pastor or his roommate had said. Not until Olevia walked into his study and told him that God walked with her, whether she liked it or not. But it didn’t help keep the bully girl out of her face at school. So she was reading about Gandhi and nonviolence. She knew that what seemed to be weakness was going to be her strength.

And it clicked for Jonathan. He stopped trying to do everything right, to earn enough money, to read the right things, to think the right things. He just prayed to God that he surrendered.

He woke the next morning and for the first time ever, doing nothing except waiting to see the sun rise, paying attention to the glorious colours of the dawn slowing push the darkness away until the deep blue sky shone bright above the pink and cream in the clouds on the horizon … and he knew that God was with him, and had been his whole life, even when he had never paid attention or cared.

For the first time ever life looked wonderful, even while he felt profound guilt for leaving Michelle so often and the grief of her leaving him with an un-fillable hole in his heart.

Three Star Joy

Thursday 19 January 2023

In Our Darkness,

We May Only See The Evil,

as here the pollution

of an oil processing plant.

Job 28:24

For he looks to the ends of the earth, and sees everything under the heavens.

Matthew 18:14

So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.

Words of Grace For Today

There are plenty of times-events when we can well wonder if God sees what is going on, if God cares about what is happening to us or to others, if God will ever intervene and stop the horrendous evils that are perpetrated against us or against others.

Just look at what men get away with doing to women. It’s all over the news. And then don’t forget to look at what women get away with doing to men. It’s not all over the news, and it should be. Instead women can freely lie to the courts, and just as effectively as men kill women, women kill men. It ought not be so easy, for men or for women to kill others. But that’s how it is. And no one seems to care that women are as effective at killing men through lies in the courts and outside the courts as men are at violently killing women with force!

Does God care?!

Just look at what rulers have done and are doing (like Putin among so many evil rulers) to people with their military. Bombing apartment buildings, city-cide, scorching the earth ahead and behind them, attacking electrical and energy delivery networks and systems … and don’t forget the forced conscription or abduction of young men and women into the military, swiftly brought to the front without sufficient training, fodder in their unjust wars.

Does God even notice?!

The atrocities are not new or suddenly present in our times. The atrocities are as old as human life on earth (maybe before!)

The scripture passages remind us that God does see everything that happens, good, bad, ugly, and atrocious. God cares and wills not that even one little person will die before their time.

We could go with that assurance and bury our heads, but …

But many little ones are being killed even this day, again! Many men (and women) will be killed today by violent or subtle means, many with courts, cops, and the community playing a part in their deaths and in the cover ups.

So what are we to do, say, or think?

As in all our responses to all evil, close at home and far away in place and time, we can but trust that God not only sees and cares, but accompanies us and all those who suffer, and when we die, God calls us home.

Having a home on earth is enjoyed by many, but it’s taken from many more, even this day, again. Having a home in eternal time (having begun before we were even born!) with God is a basis for great joy and thanksgiving in life, even this day … even if this day were the day that we would finally succumb to our enemies’ ongoing attacks against our lives.

With great joy and thanksgiving, then we go into this day and each day. What more can we ask of life?

…

Well, let me make a list … it’ll be a few hundred pages long so hang on to your hats.

Or …

We can rest in God’s blessings already given to us each day and again this day.

Christ’s Light Shines,

like three stars,

even in this darkness.

With the Help of …

Tuesday 17 January 2023

All Paths Lead to The Point.

The point of life is to treasure

God’s Grace!

Psalms 119:11

I treasure your word in my heart, so that I may not sin against you.

2 Timothy 1:14

Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.

Words of Grace For Today

While we are given the ability to choose to love or to not love (sin), we do not posses the ability on our own to do all that is right. We are, by design, sinners.

But with the help of the Holy Spirit, who lives in us as is promised and demonstrated at our baptisms, we are saints, ones who do God’s will.

Now that is something to treasure!

It is the most precious gift ever possible.

And God gives it to us wretched sinners, so that we may live, with the help of the Holy Spirit.

Dead Proud

Friday 6 January 2023

Thick Fog Settles

and Departs,

Leaving Glorious Patterns of Crystals.

Our Pride Only Destroys All It Touches.

Second Chronicles 32:24-25

In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. He prayed to the Lord, and he answered him and gave him a sign. But Hezekiah did not respond according to the benefit done to him, for his heart was proud. Therefore wrath came upon him and upon Judah and Jerusalem.

1 Peter 5:5

In the same way, you who are younger must accept the authority of the elders. And all of you must clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another, for ‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. ’

Words of Grace For Today

There is a fast way to orchestrate one’s own demise: pride.

There is a wonderful, enriching way to live blessed and shared those blessings with others: humility.

Today we pray, may we be humble this day, and in every day to come.

Vacillations

Thursday 29 December 2022

Whether By Night

Or By Day,

The Beauty Is God’s,

The Pollution

From Making Power for Our Insatiable Striving to Control Our World

is Ours

Numbers 23:19

God is not a human being, that he should lie, or a mortal, that he should change his mind. Has he promised, and will he not do it? Has he spoken, and will he not fulfil it?

2 Corinthians 1:19

For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not ‘Yes and No’; but in him it is always ‘Yes.’

Words of Grace For Today

God is not human, vacillating with first this Word and then later a contrary Word, always indecision reflected as the inability to know and control what is to come. Rather God is Omniscient and All Powerful so that God’s Words and Promises are sure, to be trusted, and thus

we are to live accordingly.

Or else!

Right?

Not really. Not really at all, at all.

For God did become human, in Jesus, and in him Paul says all things are always Yes – not vacillating between Yes and No. Paul asserts this when he was caught out by having told the Corinthians of his plans to return to Corinth and then his actually not returning by choice or due to things beyond his control. Paul wants to reestablish his trustworthiness to the Corinthians by pointing out that Paul is, like Jesus, always trustworthy, though not in this case! And, if we are honest, it is never the case for any human.

Though some people intentionally lie and are very predictable in that they will do you harm if it is to their advantage, there is not a person ever who can know the future and control it, try as many may.

So we are left vacillating between our yes’s and our no’s and seem to be untrustworthy and out of control. That chaos evil people take advantage of, manipulating others’ destruction and their advantage.

And that is just how it is,

Right?

Not at all, not at all.

For God’s Word is sure, and while we must not comply with God’s Word, and in fact are woefully incapable of doing so consistently,

By God’s grace and by God’s grace alone, we get to live according to God’s Word, not that it ‘works to our advantage’

but in order that we are examples of how God works with woeful sinners like us, like you, like us all.

What Awaits Us?

How Shall We Proceed?

Wednesday 28 December 2022

As Time Moves On, As Seasons Come to an End, As Canoeing Ended and the Snows Began, So On This Day What Comes to an End?

Psalms 42:12

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.

2 Corinthians 3:12

Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness,

Words of Grace For Today

Looking,

Looking where?

Looking back, forward, in depth, inward, to the stars?

In the in between time we look where it counts:

to God

for hope,

and love,

and life,

and purpose,

and direction, also for this day.

Though hope is based on nothing tangible, and while living based on nothing tangible is foolhardy,

nevertheless we proceed with boldness in everything we do,

for our hope is based on what is not tangible, but what is infallible, and the source of the only security available to any human in life: God’s Word.

So let the day bring what it will, we will hope

to respond with the same Grace God shows us each day.

And

that is a good ending to any year, day, moment, and even life, if that is what awaits us.

When There’s No Morning Light?

Monday 12 December 2022

Morning comes so late and

then in a snowstorm,

barely at all.

Still God’s Light is with us,

more than the oil processing plant’s light

breaks the northern horizon’s

quiet.

Psalms 31:17

Do not let me be put to shame, O Lord, for I call on you; let the wicked be put to shame; let them go dumbfounded to Sheol.

Ephesians 5:8

For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light…

Words of Grace For Today

‘Let the wicked be put to shame and let them go to hell!’

Which is all fine and good, except that, when we are honest we have to recognize that on our own we are the wicked.

Ahhh, yes, what goes around comes around, so to speak!

We were once the darkness of the world, but now we are light. Once we were the wicked, but now we are the righteous, though we are only light and righteous because God so makes us by removing our own records from us and applying Jesus’ pure record to us in relationship to God and all creation.

So we get to live as the Light, as the Righteous, even though it is not us, but rather the Holy Spirit working in us.

And what are we to do with others who practice wicked ways still? Forgive them, so that they can repent and join the Light and the Righteous. And when they refuse to even recognize their wicked ways, and do horrendous damage to so many people, well …

well then God must deal with them.

We can work on forgiving them, or we can bind their sins, and let them know they are bound so that they know God will judge them according to truth.

As for this day, there is plenty to do to survive the cold of winter, and prepare our hearts, minds and lives for the Christ-child-come-celebration ahead.

Now is time of reflection, sombre introspection, and thanksgiving for all God does for us each day.

So we take time, time to rest and think and pray and sing and …

let God speak to us again,

and to recognize that God walks with us each day, no matter what comes our way.

Quench & Despise not; Test & Hold Fast!

Friday 2 December 2022

Life,

as in taking to the horizon,

requires of us:

Action

and Letting Go

(Trusting God’s Promises!)

Numbers 11:29

But Moses said to him, ‘Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!’

1 Thessalonians 5:19-21

Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good …

Words of Grace For Today

In baptism the Holy Spirit pours great gifts on and into us:

the spirit of the Lord, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

So, then what.

Life is still as complicated and simple, demanding and peaceful, evil and blessedly wonderful as it was before. What difference do these gifts really make.

None, if we work everyday to quench and stifle the Spirit working in us.

None, if we despise the prophets words and Jesus’ Word.

None, if we do not test all the words that come to us, testing to discern if they are truly the Word of God, the prophets and of the saints, or if they are fake words, set there to create chaos, under the cover of which the Devil works so freely to rob us of life.

None, if we do not actively hold fast to the gifts given to us by the Spirit. Just remember, we cannot earn or actually hold on to God’s Spirit. It is that we hold fast to the promise that God will continue to hold us, no matter what, and we do not need to try so hard to make it all happen, to make it all good. God redeems and creates anew each day, in us, and in all creation around us and to the ends of the universe.

So we work hard, and rest completely in God’s good hands. This is how we continue to live as the saints have who have gone before us.

Today is another full day, of not quenching, not despising, but testing and hold fast …

and resting fully in God’s hands that hold us …

on the wild, awesome, wondrous ride that is the life of the saints.