From the Pulpit: Give thanks to the Lord

Stepping out of our garden in the country, I am amazed at the abundance of the harvest. Overwhelming in some ways! Five-gallon pails heaping with cucumbers, tomatoes, and yellow and green peppers; baskets full of red, yellow and white onions; water-filled pitchers packed with fresh-cut zinnias destined for kitchen tables.

It’s been 10 years since my wife and I have dry-land gardened. What I mean is, we planted the garden in mid-May, watered the already-started plants from the greenhouse the day we planted them and that’s it. Nothing but good seed, good soil, some careful hoeing and timely rains. No artificial watering. No herbicides or pesticides.  All we have done is sit back and wait and see what Creation would do. (I am not quite sure why I am so impressed with our August harvest. It’s not like we haven’t gardened before. But, impressed again we are with just how completely we have had nothing to do with the increase.)

In our lives of faith, sometimes all we need to do is get back at it … give God a chance to take over and deliver an abundance that we know is not of our making. To gladly receive from the hand of God is the encouragement of scripture. Many of the psalms, for instance, celebrate God’s creating hand. In Psalm 65, the psalmist praises God’s blessing of the people saying, 

“You visit the earth and water it; you greatly enrich it; 

the river of God is full of water, you provide grain to the people, for so you have prepared it.”

An old truth is worth repeating as our garden’s wind down: Everything good in your life is from God. To just sit back and wait and see what God has done, is doing and will do is a great way to live out our days and to go to bed impressed with how completely God is for us.