Winter

The Longest Journey – Part 1

/ pastorpete51 / 1 Comment

  But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law Galatians 4:4 ESV

On the night Jesus was born the shepherds had followed long dark pathways down from the hills where they had been watching the flocks. Joseph and Mary had wearily journeyed all the way from Nazareth to Bethlehem at just this right time. Farthest of all came the wise men who had journeyed all the way from the east. But of all who were there in Bethlehem no one had traveled father than the one for whom they came.

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The shepherds came at the time they heard the angels. The wise men journeyed at the time they saw His star appear. Mary and Joseph arrived when the time was completed for the birth of the child. How interesting that Jesus also came at just the right time,

 

It was at His chosen hour that God sent His Son. It was the longest journey from the place of the pure love of God to a world where King Herod ordered the execution of innocent children. It was an enormous distance from the halls of worshiping angels to a stable with the snorting of cattle and the rustle of mice in the hay. But at God’s exact day and hour Jesus came. He could wait no longer. Our dark and cold world awaited Him as angels stood on tip-toe to witness His birth. He came as hope when all our hopes had been wrapped in night. He arrived in the natural pains of child birth and but He opened His eyes His journey was only just beginning.

My Winter Garden

/ pastorpete51 / 1 Comment

Queen Lily she is resting

Underneath her frozen bed

While sister Iris covered in snow

Shakes her sleepy head

The daffodils start snoring

While the tulips pray for Spring

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And Rose patiently puts on her robe of ice

Till the robin flies home on May’s wings

And the Father of Gardens smiles lovingly down

Through this season of quiet and cold

As we gently wait through our Winter

Till His bloom time comes round for our souls

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The Farmer Prepares for Spring

/ pastorpete51 / Leave a comment

Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering his seed, some fell along the path and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop – a hundred, sixty, or thirty times what was sown. Matthew 13:3-8

One of my favorite things to o in winter was to scan through seed catalogues and plan for spring planting. The catalogue pages were always filled with colorful photos of how those dry hard seeds might look if I planted them at my house. Then I would draw the shape of next year’s garden, and decide where to put the cucumbers and squash and which new varieties of tomato would grow best on the mountain where we lived.

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Jesus tells a story of a farmer not unlike any of us. He had decided what seed to plant and chosen exactly the right day to place them in the soil. He probably left his house with a bag bursting at the seams with the precious seed and walked out to begin his day’s work. As he started up the hard path some of the seed spilled out and as it bounced on the hard ground the birds began to follow him and gobble up every one. Once he arrived he tried to evenly spread the seeds in the furrows and from one end to the other of the field to the other. But even though all of the plowed field looked beautiful and clean, underneath the surface there were hidden rocks in some of the corners and thorn and thistle seed had blown in overnight at the edges. No one would be able to tell what would become of the harvest until the seed began to grow.

The same story is worked out every Sunday in many of our churches. The same sermon is preached to all of us, but the message has radically different results depending on how we listen. But our problem is not with the one who planted the seed, because we all have the same farmer! The difference at harvest time comes from how our field has been prepared. Before you hear even one more sermon maybe the best prayer should be, “Oh Lord prepare my heart!”