Wednesday, September 16, 2020
Rewards
for a good day at the harvest:
a great, golden sunset!
Proverbs 3:9
Honour the Lord with your substance and with the first fruits of all your produce.
Luke 6:35
Love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.
Words of Grace For Today
The leaves have begun to turn, not colours wondrous, but brown spotted. This is not healthy I would think.
As the harvest is gathered, though I have no produce to gather in, we hear the call to honour God and God’s people by sharing, not the left overs, the trickle downs, but the first fruits of our produce and our substance!
Many people the world over have no produce to gather in. Food is grown in massive quantities by massive farm operations, processed and distributed in stores for sale for those who are so fortunate to live where and how food can be purchased.
So what first fruits do we share?
The brown spotted, diseased leaves of the trees struggling to stay alive against some unseen disease or environmental shift too swift for them to adapt to?
We may not have produce or even healthy plant life around us, but we do have substance. Each and every one of us has substance.
At harvest time, and at every time, God calls us to use our substance, our heritage and present being, our contribution to our lineage as God’s people, in order that:
We will love our enemies!
We will do good!
We will lend expecting not to be repaid!
We will imitate Jesus, being kind to both the wonderful people of God and to the ungrateful and wicked people, infested with Evil.
For by being kind and gracious, we imitate Jesus and share what he has given us, our lives. And more: we may indeed in our time bring others to hear, experience and trust what Jesus has done for us all. And even if not in this generation, we live the story that will be told for generations, of how Jesus calls us to give grace upon grace, so that in future generations others may hear, experience and trust what Jesus has done for us all.
The Harvest goes on to the end of time, and our contribution is only a tiny spot in a long line of hope driven love that will give life as a gift that keeps on giving … long after the leaves are all gone.
We give what we have received without merit: life abundant.