Tag: Sugar Snaps

Community

I have sugar snaps! The delicate white flowers have birthed tiny green beans which I will soon pick and eat. The temptation is to pick them immediately, but I need to wait. The fruit will be ready soon. My mouth waters in anticipation.

These sweet peas thrive when planted close to each other. When their tendrils can’t reach the supports, they cling to their neighbors who can reach the metal rungs. Together, they reach upward and capture the sunlight. I have had occasions when a single plant has grown apart from the others and it doesn’t fare as well. Maybe it has to do with pollination, but I don’t know. Pollination is not an area of gardening that I understand or consider much. I only know that my sugar snaps love to be in community.

And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching. Hebrews 10:24-25.

And even as I am grateful for this fruit grown in community, I am thankful for the community around me that encourages the growth of fruit in me and provokes me to love and good deeds. I am thankful for an environment where I can openly discuss my faith, where the biggest risk I face is rolled eyes.

For years now, I have been praying for Christians persecuted for their faith. This past week I have been praying for people in the Maldives, an island nation where Christianity is forbidden. For the ones who come to faith in Christ, they will lose their jobs, their homes, and their families. They are imprisoned and often killed. In the Bible Belt, we talk about Jesus over beers on a Friday night and in our casual conversations at the grocery store. There are Bible studies and prayer gathering just about every day of the week.

What must it feel like to be the only person you know who believes that Jesus was God-made-man who came to save us from death and sin and reconcile us to the Father? Would I doubt my sanity? My belief would almost have to have come from a personal revelation since there are no Bibles or pastors or Christian homes and schools. Without the community to provoke me would I still feel the need to love those who persecute me? Would I still be able to grow and bear fruit?

There are plants that grow in sulfur-soaked waters at the bottom of the ocean. There are plants that grow in hot and waterless wastelands. There is faith that is born not because the environment is friendly, but because God is real and active in the world.

We can’t go to these places to encourage these lone believers, but we can pray that God will protect them and care for them and give them hope and love. As an aside, faithful men and women are always trying to infiltrate these areas of open hostility and share the love of God, not just with their persecuted brethren but with those who persecute as well. For more information, contact Voice of the Martyrs at www.persecution.com.

Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured as though you yourselves were being tortured. Hebrews 13:3.

Occasionally, I sense God talking to me, guiding me through His Spirit. I sometimes doubt my sanity when it happens. Voices in my head and all that. But God is real and active in the world. He can speak to people with such power that they are willing to give up everything, their homes, their families, their jobs, even their lives, to follow Jesus. What would I give up to follow Him?

Today, I thank the Lord that I, like my sugar snaps, live in a community which encourages my growth, pulls me ever upward, and provokes me to produce fruit. If the fruit is not evident today, it will be soon. My mouth waters in anticipation.

Love in Christ, Betsy

Something to Cling to

The forecasted rain has yet to arrive, so I head to the garden to water my emerging plants. The garlic thrives, the beets have yet to emerge, but this morning I am drawn to the sugar snaps. Their fragile tendrils reach into the air in search of something solid. Once found, they wrap themselves around the bars of the supports and hold on as if their life depends on it. Once secure on one rung, the plants grow ever upward.

This is Holy Week. What are you clinging to?

Easter traditions of a meal with family? New Spring clothes to herald warmer weather? The laughter of little children discovering eggs filled with treats? What does Easter mean to you?

The Church offers many ways to observe Holy week – The waving of branches and singing of Hosanna; Holy communion in remembrance of the last supper, Passion plays and the stripping of the church, gatherings in the garden, sunrise services, and exuberant Easter celebrations. The known world was changed forever by the actions of this small group of people in a remote backwater. Because they clung to the eternal support shown to them on Easter morning. Jesus the Christ rose from the dead.

There are lots of big words and complex theologies about the why and the how, about who Jesus was and is, about God’s nature and divine will and the Word. We want to understand that which is so much more complicated and complex and powerful than we are. But perhaps faith is best expressed in a story.

The story of a man who claimed to be the Son of God and was put to death for it. And on the third day, on that non-descript Sunday morning, he rose from the dead, proving that his claims were true.

That is what we can cling to. God did something amazing, unbelievable even. But it happened.

For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with he scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, although some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 1 Corinthians 15:3-7.

Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.

We are about to commemorate the beauty of the last supper, Jesus’ obedience in Gethsemane, the horrors of the crucifixion, the despair at his death. It can be tempting to live in that space, to cling to his suffering and his humanity. When we are suffering, it helps to know he suffered as well, even more so than we suffer now. We remember him washing Judas’ feet, dining with him, offering him bread and wine, and know he offers this to us sinners as well.

We can absorb the horrors of Holy Week because we cling to the truth of Easter Sunday.

The wind has been gusty for days now. An outdoor picnic led to plates blown off the table and toys blown across the yard. We were clipping the tablecloth to the table and weighting the boxes of egg dye.

The sugar snaps were unaffected by the wind gusts. They held firm, clinging to the truth of the trellises offered to them.

This is Holy Week. What are you clinging to?

Love in Christ, Betsy