Life Strategy

A curtain of fog hung over the land this morning, obscuring all in its swirling raw dampness. We could not see beyond the nearest point in the fields. Yet the birds were singing; above the cloud, the sun was shining, and before long warm rays broke through and beamed a light down. Gradually, the mist dissipated and the view returned.

Every news report seems to lead with the most recent 24-hour death count, draping a pall of doom over us all. But yesterday on Facebook I saw the smiling faces of dear young people in Illinois, welcoming the birth of their fourth baby with exclamations of joy. An atmosphere of death cannot stifle the power of life. Life, light and love will break through. God is the Lord of Life.

It was a quiet Easter, but a powerful one. Living through the chaos of this pandemic, where nobody has suggested a strategy which guarantees a safe exit from the lock downs, it is comforting to know that God has a strategy. Even at creation, he recognised that a pall of death would threaten us and would require his personal intervention as the Lord of Life.  

Remain in me, Jesus told his friends, and I will remain in you. Nothing can separate us from the Lord of Life. Rooted in Jesus, may we all bear the fruit he is bringing at this time, whatever that may look like.

Fruitless

I’m just in from weeding round each individual raspberry cane, because they were so overwhelmed by buttercups and clover and things that I couldn’t even see some of the shorter canes.

What was revealed was that several of them are absolutely dead. They were so overgrown with weeds, though, that I was unaware of that fact and assumed that beneath the canopy of green there was a thriving, or at least surviving, rasp cane which, if not productive this year, promised to be productive in the future. How wrong I was.

It makes me think that there are undoubtedly areas in my life which I assume are thriving and getting ready to bear fruit, when in fact their deadness is hidden by a busy overgrowth of activity. I think it’s time to pull back the busyness and check the underlying health of my commitments, activities, and dreams.

Hothouse Growth

We’ve had some good summer warmth and sunshine over the past few weeks, interspersed by days like today – windy and overcast and relatively cool.

I dip in and out of the garden, attacking the weeds in one small patch one day, those in another a different day. As we get towards the longest day and the warmest weather, I notice the speed of growth of the pesky weeds accelerates and if I’m not diligent, the buttercups and ground elder and sticky willow can take over, spreading their tentacles and roots everywhere, strangling the life out of the plants I so carefully tend.

Be alert, Jesus advises. Forgive as your father forgave you. Completely. Unconditionally. Lovingly. Consigning the memory of the incident to the eternal waste bin.

Somebody says or does something that irritates or hurts you. You laugh it off but to tell the truth, the seed of the infraction settles into your memory and begins to take root. You say you’d like to forget it but in fact every so often you entertain the memory of it, and the remembered offence begins to grow, responding to the warmth and light you give it.

Be alert. Don’t allow a grudge to develop. Don’t permit yourself to take offense. Don’t entertain memories of others’ failures towards you. Don’t give heat and light to the negative, which can grow ‘like Topsy’ and strangle the positive.

Accentuate the positive. Nurture and feed the good memories; air them, give them heat and light, encourage them to grow like tropical flowers in a jungle, to bear good fruit that will nurture others.

Give the negative to God, and leave it there to wither. Be alert. Be on your guard.

I’ll try to take my own advice.

Feeding

Patrolling the four trees we call the orchard today, I see that they are much healthier looking than they have been for the last few years. Although the plum doesn’t show any sign of blossom – therefore no plums – its leaves look fresh and whole, unmarked by brown scabs, and the branches also look better than previous years. The apple trees are beginning to blossom, as is the little pear tree, which has so far never borne fruit.

They all look healthier than I remember in the past. 

A couple of months ago, I scattered food pellets around their bases and roughly scraped them in. Perhaps for years now the poor trees have been starving, lacking some necessary vitamin. The apples have fruited, but small apples, and the plum has produced a dozen or so delicious specimens.

Now I don’t know – watch this space – our weather is so unseasonably, unreasonably cold (I heard the highest road in the UK, not far from here, was closed last night due to snow!) we may yet have no harvest from those trees. But today, I think they are looking good.

There’s a line in the Episcopal service of communion in which is prayed that we would feed on Jesus in our hearts, by faith, with thanksgiving. Jesus called himself the bread of life. When we are nurtured and fed by him, we bear good fruit, full-sized, free of scabs and disease. 

I’m sure much of the fruit I may have borne in my life has been mis-shapen and small. I’ve not fed as much as I should have. Feeding on Jesus is a bit like the way a cow feeds (I’ve just walked past a pasture of cows and calves). They take a long time over their eating, chewing, digesting, ruminating, ‘chewing the cud’. 

I’m going to go do that now. Read some of Jesus’ words, and then chew over them throughout the day. Today I want the fruit I bear to be healthy and free from disease.