Monday, October 22, 2007

Working to bring in a harvest...

It’s very late in the year to do much gardening here in Western New York, but my wife was working in the garden yesterday. We still have much that needs harvesting, and she pulled another box of tomatoes off vines (she’s already canned about 40 quarts, and a few quarts of spaghetti sauce), several winter squash, and some other assorted surprises.

One of the surprises were some potatoes. We’ve never grown potatoes before, and we probably should have pulled them out of the ground some time ago. At this point, the plants are all dead, and actually gone – the stems are broken off and rotted away and it’s very hard to know where to dig.

Sandy (my wife) was just digging around everywhere in the general area where she thought they might be, she has so far dug in about a six foot by ten foot area, turning the dirt about six inches deep, and if she finds any potatoes, she digs deeper there.

It’s kind of fun, because you never know where you’ll find them, and when you do find them, you never know how many you’ll find, or how big they will be. There are anywhere from two to ten potatoes in each hole, ranging in size from a good size for baking, to less than a half inch! Every hole is different; it’s like hunting for treasure.

While our approach to finding these potatoes might seem a little unorthodox (digging everywhere until you find one, then dig deeper there), that might be a good way to live our life of faith.

In Experiencing God, Henry Blackaby tells us the best way to live our life of faith is to look for where God is already working, and join him there.

In the garden, we looked fairly shallow for a potato, knowing that if we found one there, there may be more below, so that’s where we concentrated our efforts. If we truly want to be available to God, we should look for signs that he is working, and concentrate our efforts there.

As you go through your day today, look for signs of God at work. A couple of sure fire ways to know where God is working is to look for people asking about God, asking about things of faith. We know that no one comes to faith in Christ without being drawn by the Holy Spirit, so if someone is questioning or seeking, God must be working there, drawing that person to Himself. That would be a good place for you to work also. Look for blessings, answered prayers, and other signs that God is working. Join Him there, dig deeper than the quick hello, and concentrate your efforts there. The harvest will be plentiful.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

How is the potato harvest going, fruitful I pray. I did grow some once but find its easier to go to the market. Besides mine seem to have some disease. But it is fun trying to grow different things. Garden are fun and fresh veggies are good eating.
Duane

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