July 07, 2009
Banquet
Ever since we planted an apricot tree we’ve experienced a spring frost that has killed all the fruit. This year I was excited to see that about 3 dozen apricots had survived the frost, but my happiness was short lived. Yesterday I discovered that every piece of fruit had been pecked by birds and not one piece was left untouched and hanging on the tree. Now I don’t begrudge them their share, but I’m a little miffed. I can’t even tell if this is a tree that bears ‘good fruit’ because I’ve never had a chance to taste it. Jesus said, “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.” (Matt 6:26a NIV) I appreciate God feeding the birds…and He feeds them so well.
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Gail;
-----If I didn’t know God as well as my scant understanding of the Bible affords me, I would think He was vastly unfair. Birds He feeds without their sowing or reaping, but man must eat by the sweat of his brow! Look who got the apricots! Last year Char grew three healthy eggplants in her greenhouse. She harvested only as many small, premature eggplants because the squirrels ate the rest. Every time a tomato neared being ripe, it became squirrel food. I made her a strawberry mound twenty feet in diameter and rising six feet at its peak. And she planted a six hundred square foot patch of blackberries. I had to build fences around both to keep the deer out. Yet all of her trouble to water and fertilize these yields her only a cereal bowl of strawberries and blackberries after the hungry little bird beaks and critter mouths have been effortlessly satisfied.
-----Still, our table is full of food. But it does not come from the plants, bushes, and trees around our home, nor do we eat any of the critters scampering about. I must put in long hours of work doing stuff for my clients they cannot do for themselves. I use to buy our food the money they pay me, which they also had to earn doing things for others. And somewhere in the long chain of folks doing things for each other are folks who toil in the dirt to raise the food we buy at the store. Sweat! Sweat! Sweat! The whole machine is greased by the sweat of man! And the lucky little bird just flits down to the ground and mindlessly plucks up its little worm.
-----Sometimes I look up at the birds and speculate being so free. But are they really that blessed? Their scant industry does not supply them with cooperation and fellowship. Their neighbors are competition, and their backyards are territories of fighting. Though they build nests, they have no roofs and heaters to drive away the chill of the rain and snow. And they have no showers to wash off the fleas, lice, and other parasites. Nor have they aspirin for their little headaches. They have no industry, they have no stuff. But when Char and I bent over to toil on our knees, setting rocks into our stove-room floor, the sweat pouring off our brows onto our work was a pleasure, for we knew we would have something from it to enjoy until the Lord moved us elsewhere, or took us home. The cars we drive to work, the roads we drive there upon, the buildings where we work, and the very clothes that decorate and shelter our bodies come from that sweat producing industriousness God has created in man. Even in this curse He has provided joy.
-----Not that it will be joyful forever, now that the old head is once again rising up in mankind. It seeks to govern and control everyone's industry for the pride of authority and the lining of pockets for itself. It is toiling to render the blessedness of family and God into the serfdom of minion to state. The food on your table will still come by the sweat of your brow, but it will only be what passes the regulations of the government. The faith you have will still carry you, but it will be mandated into the alliance of industry and politics. This head will run wild, but it will not be able to hide. For when it becomes ripe in the fullness of its masquerade, the King will come with sword in mouth and cut it from amongst His beloved mankind. Then once again, as the garden provided Adam with effortless food, God will provide His people with sweatless life.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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