Producing good fruit

 We didn't really plant a bigger garden this year and we didn't really plant a ton of stuff.  Just a boat load of tomatoes, green beans from seeds, green peppers, jalapenos, one watermelon plant and one cantaloupe plant.  The rabbits ate the jalapenos.  Every plant.  The 20 green bean seeds produced 3 plants with edible beans.  But the rest...YUMMY!

 I love the hard, sweaty work of canning.  I love the satisfied feeling I get when I gaze at a shelf full of deliciousness.  We've got some apple sauce and a few random things left from last year, but the rest is new from this year.  I've canned 17 quarts of tomatoes so far! (Yes, I plan to can more!  For spaghetti sauce and chili, you can't have too many tomatoes!) We have 4 1/2 pints of salsa- smooth, not chunky, because that's the way Lige likes it.  I've also got 5 1/2 pints of Cinnamon Crabapple Jelly.  MmmmMmmm!  Just ask my mom.  ;)

 I love canning season so much.  As I harvest all the good stuff from my garden, I can't help but be thankful for good fruit.  Which leads my mind to think of other kinds of good fruit...the kind that will truly last, not just through the winter, but forever.  The fruit of the Spirit: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-Control.  I love how God cultivates these things in me, even when the pruning is painful. 

We have some very large tomatoes plants.  When they were about a foot tall, I stuck those tomato cages around them to keep them growing straight and tall.  However, as they grew and produced tomatoes, the weight of heavy fruitfulness proved to much for those wire cages.  The plants just leaned right over onto the ground.  Here's the thing, left on the ground, all that ripe fruit will rot and spoil.  So Lige and I pulled the plants up gently but firmly, and found some iron fence stakes to prop them back upright.  Now the plants can continue to produce the abundance of tomatoes they were intended to yield.

Without God's careful tending, I would be like those tomato plants.  I would weary bearing all that ripe fruit and just lay down in the dirt to spoil.  I've shared that ministry life can be difficult.  I confess that there have been moments I just wanted to set it all down and walk away.  God had different plans.  By His grace, He didn't leave me to wallow in the mud rotting.  He gave me His peace.   He propped me up with good and godly friends who spoke truth into my life.  He started pruning away at some of the ugly parts of my heart, and from where they were removed- joy sprung out.  And thankfulness, too.  I love how He encourages me with His word.
⁹ Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." (Galatians 6:9)

And with the exuberant joy that comes from knowing, knowing, God's word, my heart sings:

"How deep the Father's love for us

How vast beyond all measure.

That He should give His only Son

To make a wretch His treasure."

(song by Stuart Townend)

That He should care to tend me...What a gracious, loving Lord.