Pastor's Corner
I'd never planned on growing flowers.
Oh, I think flower gardens are a lovely way to
spend one's time. They add a little beauty to our world, and make
for a wonderful visiting place for our beleaguered pollinators. I
can see the delight in that.
But that's not my goal, as I plant. My garden,
insofar as I put time into it, is all about the delight of producing even
a fractional amount of our household food. My enjoyment comes from
the taste and flavor of those things that rise from the earth, from the
beans and strawberries and blueberries, from the tomatoes and potatoes
and squash. That I am in some small way nourishing my body with
those simple labors has a nourishing effect on my soul.
So I did not set out to have flowers, to have
beauty for the sake of beauty, though I appreciate it.
But of course, I do have flowers. You have to, if there is to
be fruit. There are so many.
I'd expected the little white strawberry flowers
that dappled our patches, and the tiny, delicate ivory blossoms on the
bush beans.
I knew, in the back of my mind, that tomatoes came from little
yellow caps, that dangle down from their vines like the headgear of some
anime elf-maiden.
But I did not anticipate the lovely white and
purple of the potatoes. And newbie to them that I am, I had no idea
that squash would be such a riot of immense, yellow-orange trumpets, male
and female both.
So there's my garden, turned to the simple,
unassuming labor of producing good things. And in the midst of that
labor, almost as an afterthought, it is filled with splashes of color and
loveliness.
There are lives like that, too, human beings who
are intent on giving and producing simple goodness. That is, I
think, the nature of acts of service and kindness. They don't begin
with the goal of being showy, or of doing anything other than being the
thing that they are. It's just the act of sitting and listening, or
helping a stranger with a simple task. Such things are as basic as
a bean, as plain as a potato.
Yet even though they aren't intentionally setting
out to be beautiful, they are.
Funny how that works.
Peace of Christ, and Blessings,
David
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