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Tuesday, December 13, 2005 posted by R.C. 9:14 PM link |
Plans to Give You Hope Though it is almost winter, and the harvest has already been brought in, and though this particular harvest will not come for several more years, visions of apple pies are dancing in my head. This morning, with the help of my friends Jon and Jordan Berkley, I finished planting fruit trees. Well, they look more like fruit twigs. The tallest of them is shorter than me. Their bases are protected by garden piping that has been painted white so as not to get too hot. So the front half of my property looks like a giant’s ashtray, with sixteen butts snuffed into the ground. I bought these from another friend, Tim Hensley, who runs a business called the Urban Homesteader. He sells not just young fruit trees, but heirloom trees, honest to goodness never-been-Frankensteined varieties of trees. Tim told me that we would see our first crop, “in three to five years, probably closer to five.” So why did I invest time, labor and money today for something that may or may not pay-off down the road? Because of the promises of God. Our father Noah stepped out of the greatest display of God’s destructive power the world had ever seen. And God promised “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth.” God promised that the seasons would follow in their pace, that the world would be ordered, that we could, in fact, make plans. True enough that I cannot be certain what tomorrow will bring. But I can plan. And I plan on eating the fruit of the land, on bearing much fruit, on seeing the end of my toil, and rejoicing in the grace of God. God will not send a flood to destroy the earth. He might, however, send blight, or canker, or drought or bitter cold. It may be that my trees could go the way of all chickens. But what is certain is that I will bear fruit. For there is but one great gardener, and He never fails. [comments] |