Last night I was picking raspberries and green beans with a friend who has been away from home for a month with cancer treatments. Their garden is lush with vegetables, all needing immediate attention. So we worked on office moving and packing all day, arranging for storage, sales, etc. as they walk through this new phase of life. And now quietly picking vegetables and fruit into the evening as the sun has gone down to at least preserve some semblance of order in their lives for the uncertain future...
I had picked some beans in the early hours of the day and we had frozen them before going to the office to start sorting, organizing, making decisions...simpler to pick beans, snap them, blanch and freeze...much less brain power and stress...
As we picked into the dusk, we shared stories of childhood gardens...I don't remember a time that my parents or grandparents didn't have a garden. It was a fact of our lives. Every spring, my dad would prepare the soil, we planted, watered, waited, and then reaped the bounty, canning or freezing for winter treasures...every year it was the same..when my mother worked, I raised the garden, doing the same as I had been instructed through childhood...
Both sets of my of grandparents did the same...it was just a fact in their lives as well...
My husband came from the same set of values as well, so as we could, we raised gardens, too...enjoying the food raised in the summer into the winter months. At times, our children had their own plots of ground to choose their own vegetables. And now, with a smaller yard and much less need, I have a few raised vegetable boxes..but each adult child has some kind of garden...not the half acre sized ones we had or their grandparents or great parents had...but something growing...to feed that ground nurturing gene...
So picking green beans in the evening coolness felt good, comforting, relaxing after the day's busyness...back to my roots..back to days gone by, spent with grandparents, parents, children and my husband as we reaped what we had sowed...
The day had been a reaping day of another kind, years of accumulation of vocations, years of work, creating, jobs, rows of files of information gathered from all over the west about the rocks which made the mountains and valleys...the soils that were salable. The dreams and aspirations of two men, looking for the mines that serve to help others in a myriad of ways...from fine jewelry to pavement in the streets upon which we drive, or computers we use daily...or batteries to run the equipment we use...each reaped a lifetime of minerals from the ground as well as joy from their families...
Another kind of gardening of sorts...reaching past the vegetation into the depths of the soil beneath...but producing the "crop" of a different kind...useful in its own way...just as the vegetation on top...and sowing into the lives of their children and grandchildren...
Thank YOU that You supplied the crops on top of the soil and the "crop" underneath as well...You have given us so much...for our use in life...
Job 22:24-25 ...and assign your nuggets to the dust, your gold of Ophir to the rock in the ravines. Then the Almighty will be your gold, the choicest silver for you. Surely then you will find delight in the Almighty, and lift your face to God...
Job 28:1-2, 5-6, 12, 15-19, 23, 28a There is a mine for silver and a place where gold is refined. Iron is taken from the earth,and copper is smelted from ore. The earth, from which food comes,is transformed below as by fire; lapis lazuli comes from its rocks,and its dust contains nuggets of gold.
But where can wisdom be found?
Where does understanding dwell? It cannot be bought with the finest gold, nor can its price be weighed out in silver. It cannot be bought with the gold of Ophir, with precious onyx or lapis lazuli. Neither gold nor crystal can compare with it, nor can it be had for jewels of gold.
Coral and jasper are not worthy of mention;the price of wisdom is beyond rubies. The topaz of Cush cannot compare with it; it cannot be bought with pure gold.
God understands the way to it and he alone knows where it dwells, And he said to the human race,“The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom,.....
2 Corinthians 9:6, 10 Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness.
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