Flower Beds or Vegetable Gardens

  Matthew 5:6

"Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. " 

While resting before the Lord my thoughts turned to the two types of gardens that I have.  Certainly, the largest is the collection of flower beds that I have planted over the years. They are filled with pansies, bougainvilleas, daises of all colors, ice plants, ivy, purple ground cover and of course, roses.  Roses are always so beautiful.  There are various hues of red, yellow, orange, pink, purple and mixed combinations of these.  One of my rose bushes holds a very special place in my heart.  It is a velvety red rose that my sister brought from Oregon.  It was a clipping from my father’s rose garden outside the house where I grew up.  Now here in California it thrives.  What a delight to the eye.  It is so peaceful to walk out into my yard and enjoy the variety and wealth of God’s creation through flowers.

 Once in a while I take cuttings from the flower beds and bring them to my wife to who arranges them in a nice bouquet for our home.  They liven our home with a beauty that man cannot build.  They are more than a decoration.  Yet, alas, they fade and die too quickly and are discarded.

 I also have a mini fruit and vegetable garden.  In the past I have grown sweet peas, tomatoes, lemons, carrots, and the like.  It is just plain fun for me to go out and pull from the ground a fresh carrot or pop the peas out of a matured pod and eat them raw – healthy too.  To be honest, I am not much of a gardener.

 But I do remember two of the finest farmers who had natural green thumbs.  Mr. and Mrs. Wyrick were their names.  They were a precious couple that attended our first church in Sandy, Oregon.  One day they called us and invited us out to their farm for Sunday lunch/dinner.  Being new pastors of a small pioneer church, we cheerfully took the opportunity for a lunch prepared at her hands.  It has been thirty years since that day, and both my wife and I remember that meal so lovingly set before us. 

 The perfectly cooked fresh salmon had just been caught.  The blueberries for the hot muffins were picked when we arrived.  And the vegetables were all vine ripened and selected especially for this meal. I had never tasted vegetables like that before.  They had such wonderful flavor.  Mrs. Wyrick was a great cook and Mr. Wyrick was a great vegetable farmer – both were such loving people.  What a combination! 

 In all of our thirty-one years of marriage we have had more than our share of eating at the best restaurants in many cities.  But as we look back over those years at the best dinners of all time, it was this one that remains at the top of our list.  Fresh food served by loving hands to two hungry pastors.  We were fed and loved by genuine saints of God.  It doesn’t get much better than that.

 Many of the teachings of Jesus are set around meals, the feeding of the five thousand, the fish breakfast of John 21, the Passover, as well as many others.  As beautiful as flower beds might be, it is food that the hungry are searching for today.  Times have changed.  It used to be that nice, well-organized programs for all ages and needs were what people sought after.  But that seems to be fading away like flowers in a flower bed.  Arising from the hungry soul of individuals is a cry for the food and drink of God.  Nothing else matters.  People are passing over things just beautiful for things deeply satisfying.  Churches can be monuments to beauty, but it is God that people hunger for.  Nice pews, stained glass windows, and a well oiled machines of religion are no replacement for God Himself.  To be touched by His hand quenches the thirst from within, like nothing else.  There are very hungry and thirsty people searching for a place to be fed.  We need to till under our flower beds and replant the Lord’s vegetable garden.

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