This gallery contains 2 photos.
Most of us are familiar with the Bible story of Hannah, mother of Samuel, and how, though barren and childless, she prayed and believed God would give her a son. Hannah is often held up as an example of a … Continue reading
At the risk of people thinking this blog is becoming a Jamie Wright fan-club site, I’m doing a second-post-in-a-row related to Jamie the Very Worst Missionary. This week, Jamie has initiated discussion on her blog regarding benefits versus unintended consequences of short-term … Continue reading
I stumbled across “The Very Worst Missionary” on Twitter and the name caught my eye. Curious, I checked out a few tweats, and wasn’t sure what to make of her. I went to her website, and was hooked. I’ve now … Continue reading
This gallery contains 1 photo.
Jay-Jay was born and raised in a mobile compound, out in the desert, by a polygamist group of separatist extremists. His father, the compound director, preached a separatist position toward all their neighbors in nearby towns, and frequently moved the … Continue reading
This gallery contains 3 photos.
I can still hear my Mama’s voice, calling to me from across the house, “Joey, shut that door! Were you born in a barn?” Growing up in the South, all of us kids heard that question every time we left … Continue reading
This gallery contains 1 photo.
Parenting is both tremendously challenging and tremendously rewarding. Few of us realized, when we began the parental journey, just how difficult the task would prove to be, or how many nights would pass in sleepless prayerful concern over our offspring. … Continue reading
Lessons from the Berry Patch
It’s one of those things that just happens, sometimes. You’re working along picking berries, filling your bucket and having a good day at the berry patch. You’ve reached your hand in through a wall of thorns, carefully selecting one big ripe berry after another while avoiding pricks. You draw back your hand, now full to overflowing with carefully cradled juicy ripe berries, to make another deposit into your berry bucket. Unexpectedly, your shirt-sleeve snags on a thorn, and the carefully cradled berries spill out of your hand to the ground, below.
What a disappointment! What do you do now? Those are your berries! You have already invested all the work of extracting them from their thorn-laden vines, to gather them into your bucket. You have fought thorns, heat, sunburn and insects to gather those berries! Right now, they seem to you like the very biggest and juiciest berries you’ve picked all day. You had them in your hand, and now they are gone.
Your first instinct will be to drop to your knees and begin gathering those dropped berries back up.
My advice is to resist that instinct. Just leave those dropped berries on the ground, and move on to more berries hanging on the vine.
Now, this advice probably sounds odd coming from me. Up until now, I have advised always pursuing the gathering of more berries, pushing past every obstacle to fill your bucket with those juicy black delectable delights. Now, I am advising leaving perfectly good berries to rot on the ground, berries that you have already gone to the trouble of picking.
It does run counter-intuitive to much of my other advice. In fact, this is one of the lessons I have the most trouble following myself. By the time I’ve retrieved a handful of berries from the thorny vines, I have an emotional investment in those specific berries. They are no longer just berries in the patch that I would like to gather. They are now mine! They are berries I have already gathered and that I am prepared to defend, in order to keep.
To make matters worse, some of the spilled berries may be laying where I can easily see them, still supported by thorns, and not yet hidden in the brown leaves and grass of the berry-patch floor. I’ll just reach back through the thorns, and pick them up again…
The problem is, it doesn’t work that way. As soon as you touch one of the vines supporting a fallen berry, it drops on down to be hidden in the grass and leaves on the ground. Normally, when you pick a berry, it stays attached to the vine until you slip your cupped hand beneath it and tug gently with your fingers to drop it into your hand. With the spilled berries, there is no support and no room to get your hand under them. The more you try to retrieve them, the further they burrow into the carpet of grass and leaves.
Now, I’m not saying they are impossible to retrieve. If you work hard at it, you will likely recover some of them. If they were the last berries on earth and you were starving, you would probably find a way to retrieve all of them.
However, they’re not the last berries on earth. In fact, there is a multitude of more berries waiting to be picked, right here in the same berry patch! And with the ratio of time spent to berries picked, it just doesn’t make sense to waste your time trying to retrieve spilled berries. You would spend at least ten times longer retrieving the dropped berries than you would moving on to pick an equal number of berries off the vine. See, the time and effort you invest in trying to retrieve the lost berries directly detracts from the time and energy available for picking new berries. The spilled berries are just not a good investment of your time, with so many other berries available for picking.
Moreover, continued pursuit of spilled berries takes your eye off the goal. Perfectly good, ripe juicy berries are hanging right in front of your face, and you are ignoring them while continuing to pursue the lost opportunity of the dropped berries.
My advice is to stop thinking about the spilled berries and immediately move on to picking more berries from the vine. At the end of the day, those fallen berries won’t make any noticeable difference in how full your bucket it is…but time wasted trying to retrieve them would.
Life Application
Life includes many disappointments and many lost opportunities. There are many things in life that just don’t work out the way we hoped they would.
Relationships, ministries, employment opportunities, career paths, and a multitude of other activities are all investments we choose to make with our time and resources, anticipating some sort of return. Some work out well and some don’t. Some exceed all our expectations, while others just fizzle.
Don’t waste time continuing to pursue lost opportunities. Whether a job opportunity that took an unexpected (and undesired) turn, a relationship that did not work out as you hoped, or a ministry that never developed, let it go and move on to other opportunities. Life is too short and too full of opportunities to waste time pursuing what you should already have learned hasn’t worked.
Thus far, in the previous Lessons from the Berry Patch, I have encouraged going for the gold, putting your fears behind you and giving that new ministry, new relationship, or new opportunity all you’ve got. With this lesson, I am not changing direction. Rather, I am pointing out that giving that new opportunity all you’ve got sometimes means first letting go of a previous lost opportunity that did not work out.
The more time and effort we invest in a given ministry or relationship, the greater our emotional attachment. We stop seeing it as an opportunity and start seeing it as a part of who we are. Which means it is really hard to let go and walk away, when it fails. We tend to continue pursuing that same lost opportunity far past the time it makes sense, when we should let it go and move on to new opportunities.
In Isaiah 43:18-19, God told the prophet, “Do not call to mind the former things, or ponder things of the past. Behold, I will do something new, now it will spring forth; will you not be aware of it? I will even make a roadway in the wilderness, rivers in the desert.” Note that it is necessary to forget the former things in order to receive and embrace the new things God has in store for us. This does not mean erasing all memory of any lessons learned, but it does mean letting go of emotional attachment and ceasing to dwell on them.
For the believer in Christ, the primary goal is to be conformed to His image, to glorify Christ in how we live our lives, and to fulfill the destiny for which He has predestined us before the foundation of the world. In reference to pursuing this goal the author of the book of Hebrews encourages us, “Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:1-2).
Note that single-minded pursuit of the goal requires first that we “lay aside every encumbrance.” In the second chapter of his letter to the Ephesians, Paul reminds them where they came from, who they now are in Christ, and of how little value are those things they once held dear. Then he goes on to say “in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth”(Ephesians 4:22-24).
In the berry patch, the difference between lost opportunities and fresh prospects is fairly clear cut. My rule is simply that once a berry has been dropped, it is no longer worth pursuing.
In life, the differences are often much more difficult to discern. It is much more difficult to tell, in a relationship, whether it just needs more tending and nurturing, or whether it is time to let it go. We don’t want to be guilty of being too scared of thorns to wade in and do the necessary hard work. Neither do we want to continue wasting our time on a relationship or ministry that is simply over.
This is where we have to rely on God’s wisdom, spending time in Bible study and prayer, asking the Holy Spirit to show us the right path.
There will be times, though, when the right path is to let go and move on. When those times come, stop wasting time and effort on the lost opportunity, and start focusing on whatever new opportunities God may lead you toward.
Questions
(please add your comments to this post):
What are some examples from your life, in which you had to recognize that it was time to let go of something in which you had invested a great deal of time and effort?
Are there any things in your life, now, that are an encumbrance to pursuing the goals God has placed before you? Is it time to lay them aside?
Coco The Timid Puppy
We have a wealth of dogs at our house…a yammering, bickering, friendly, excitable, playful yard and house full of dogs!
Each dog has its own personality, and its own way of interacting with both dogs and humans, and all are excited at every opportunity to see me. As soon as I step out of the
door, or pull up in the car, they all come running, eager for attention, and eager to be recognized.
All, that is, except Coco, our nine-month-old puppy. Coco cringes down whenever she sees me coming, as though expecting to be disciplined for bad behavior. She walks coyly away, casting sidelong glances, when I call her. If I walk toward Coco, she runs and hides from me.
Coco doesn’t behave this way with everyone. Whenever Sherri or one of the boys calls
Coco, she comes running, eager for attention, just like the other dogs.
For a while, I thought that Coco just disliked me, for some reason. However, this is not the case. If I happen to catch Coco not watching and start petting her, she will relax and stretch out, obviously enjoying the attention. Sometimes, when I am petting another dog, Coco will slowly ease up and slip in between, so as to be petted.
Obviously, she does like me and does enjoy my attention. However, she behaves very timidly toward me, as though she is never quite sure what to expect from me.
I think Coco’s timidity toward me began a couple of months ago. One afternoon, as I was working in the garden, several of the dogs started playing, romping, and digging amongst the tomatoes, corn, and peppers. “No, Stay out of the garden!” I scolded as I chased them away.
A few minutes later Coco returned with another puppy, to continue their destructive play. Again, I scolded and chased them away, before returning to work. When Coco returned yet again (alone this time) I picked her up and carried her to the edge of the garden, thoroughly scolding her the whole time.
A few minutes later, pausing from weeding, I looked up to discover Coco was back in the garden, digging up a tomato plant. “No!” I scolded, “Stay out of the garden!” as
I carried her back to the edge of the garden, setting her down with a firm swat. Totally shocked, Coco ran yelping across the yard to hide under the truck!
Ever since that swat, Coco has acted very timid toward me.
My intent, in giving Coco a swat, was to teach her the meaning of the word “No!” and respect for the boundary of the garden.
Unfortunately, Coco learned the wrong lesson. The lesson that Coco retained is that there are some behaviors that I dislike, and although she doesn’t know what all of
those are, if caught doing something I don’t like, she may be disciplined.
So, she behaves accordingly. She acts guilty whenever she sees me coming, assuming she is likely doing something I disapprove of, and anticipating undesired discipline.
Coco is so concerned about possibly doing something wrong, and so nervous about being disciplined, that she doesn’t realize that I really like her, and want her to like me.
Isn’t that how we sometimes behave toward God?
The Bible tells of God’s rules, and we realize that we have often broken God’s laws. We read of God’s discipline and judgment, in the Old Testament, and we expect God to behave harshly toward us. Upon encountering undesirable events, we assume that God is disciplining us for our bad behavior.
Caught up in the business of life, we miss a few daily quiet times, skip church a few Sundays, and one day realize that it has been quite a while since we really talked with God. We miss the closeness of fellowship with God, but suspect He may not be too pleased with us by now, and aren’t too sure we are ready to deal with it. So we stay away a while longer…and the guilt and dread pile up deeper…
Like Coco, the timid puppy, after a while we can reach a point where we cringe every time we think of God, and run the other way and hide every time we sense His presence. The longer we avoid God, the more we perceive Him as a harsh task master
watching and waiting for us to make a mistake, so He can discipline us.
Yet the overwhelming fundamental message of the Bible is that God loves us deeply. In Romans 5:8, the Apostle Paul said that “God demonstrates His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us,” and in John 3:17, Jesus said, “For God
sent His son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world, through Him, might be saved.”
God loves us and wants to have an intimate relationship with us. He is not looking for an excuse to discipline us. Rather, He is looking for opportunity to demonstrate His love toward us!
Yes, God does discipline His children. However, His discipline is not because He is
angry with us, but because He loves us too much to leave us blind and selfish. His discipline is an act of love to guide and teach us, not to vent His anger.
Rather than cringing and hiding like timid puppies, “let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).
Discussion Questions
(please respond with comments):
In what areas of your life have you behaved toward God as a timid puppy, too scared of His disapproval to draw near to Him? Can you, now, trust His grace and enjoy His fellowship?
Always Kneel to Pick Low Fruit
While picking blackberries, you will encounter some berries hanging low to the ground, just peaking out from beneath the leaves. Your natural instinct will be to reach down, pluck the low-hanging berries, glance around for any other fruit, then move along to either left or right in search of more berries.
Resist this natural instinct. Rather than reaching down to pick the low-hanging berries, kneel down. I know, it sounds crazy. You’re in the middle of a berry patch, with thorns, weeds and mud. Why on earth would you want to kneel down on the ground, when you can just as easily reach all the berries by simply stooping down?
Here’s the thing. Kneeling changes your perspective. If you see three or four low-hanging berries and reach down to pick them, you wind up with what you expected, three or four berries. However, if you kneel to pick them, you gain a new perspective that often reveals more berries. Often, some of the juiciest berries are tucked back, concealed in the shade of the overshadowing leaves, and you simply cannot see them from a standing position. Where a few berries are visible, more are likely hidden, and kneeling gives you the necessary perspective to see and harvest them.
Also, kneeling slows you down and helps you focus. You may not even realize that you’re rushing, when you stoop to pick, but you are. Your mind has already started moving forward to the next stop; your eyes have already started glancing in search of the next pocket of berries; your feet have already started to shift your weight.
Kneeling, on the other hand, says you’re ready to stay awhile. Rather than focusing on the next little pocket of berries, the portion of the patch right in front of your eyes has your full attention, and you have no plans to move forward from that spot, until you have found and picked every ripe berry within reach.
By kneeling, you will often pick a dozen or more berries, where you had originally seen only three or four. The difference is in the new perspective gained, and the focused attention of staying put for a while.
Life Application
In life, in general, it usually pays to take the time to search for hidden treasures. We tend to get so busy rushing about the business of life that we forget what life is all about. We’re so busy earning a living for our family that we forget to take the time to enjoy them, and to let them know we appreciate them. We’re so busy trying to please our boss that we forget to take the time to listen to our boss’s priorities and needs.
We’re all guilty of it at times, and that’s a real shame, because it is to our own detriment.
Take the time to enjoy a child’s comment on their day, or your spouse’s tender heart. Take the time to notice when a coworker is having a bad day or appears upset. Take
the time to notice a beautiful sunrise or a night sky full of stars.
I know it may sound trite to talk about stopping to smell the roses, but it is still true. These are the real treasures of life, magic moments where God is either revealing His glory to you, or giving you the opportunity to reveal His glory to others, by simply taking the time to notice.
Just as kneeling to pick berries yields the change of perspective necessary for spotting hidden berry treasures, kneeling in prayer, before God, yields a new perspective on life.
I cannot tell you how many times I have come before the Father asking for His help, and walked away with a completely different perspective on the situation and my role in it. My focus is usually on changing the situation and changing other people’s actions. God’s focus seems to usually be on changing my heart and my perspective.
I approach God, feeling frustrated, and I leave the conversation feeling motivated.
What a change!
And it would not be possible without the change of perspective that kneeling provides. There is simply something about physical posture that changes our ability to listen.
Kneeling, or bowing my head, says that I am in need of help, that I am ready for a new perspective, and that I am ready to sit and listen, rather than rushing off.
Right after explaining the need for wearing protective armor, Paul tells us, in Ephesians 6:18, “With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit…” Clearly, “praying at all times” means having an attitude of prayer all day long, and asking God for guidance as we go about our daily business.
However, it is all too easy to let this slide into simply casting up God-help-me’s throughout the day, without taking the time to actually listen to God. The focus of prayer should be less on my telling God my needs (which He already knows) and more on my listening to God and allowing Him to change my perspective. That requires a change in posture with time to listen. If the situation does not permit kneeling, then at least find a place to bow my head and listen for a moment.
So, take the time to kneel…and plan to stay put a while. You will likely walk away with treasures that were previously hidden.
Questions
(please add your comments to this post):
Can you tell us of a situation you have faced, where you went before God asking for his help and walked away with a different view of the situation? How was your attitude changed by that time kneeling before God? What new treasures were you able to see that had previously been hidden from your sight?
Lessons from the Berry Patch
Wild blackberries are free for the picking!
Blackberries grow wild, in Arkansas, and throughout most of the South. They grow anywhere they can get plenty of sunshine and water, and haven’t been regularly mown down. Wild berries don’t require planting or tending. They don’t require pruning, watering, fertilizing, mulching, hoeing, or weeding.
Wild blackberries are simply “brought forth” from the earth, as nature’s bounty, of tasty, refreshing, sweet, juicy berries. You can take any open field in Arkansas, stop mowing it or tending it, and within two years, wild blackberries will be growing in any low spots where water collects, and where there is plenty of direct sunlight. They just grow, whether you want them to or not, unless you are putting specific effort into keeping them from growing.
Wild blackberries don’t have to be bought or paid for. Yes, some farmers charge people to pick berries on their farms. However, generally speaking, anyone who lives in rural Arkansas, and likes to pick blackberries, knows where they can find plenty of wild berries free of charge. You just have to be willing to look.
Wild blackberries are simply God’s free gift to us, a juicy, sweet, delicious gift he makes available to anyone who wants them, with no charge, and no need to plant, water or tend. They are a completely free gift, already made available, with no strings attached, and nothing you can do to earn them or pay for them!
Harvesting wild blackberries requires a lot of dedication and hard work! Yes, they are free for the picking, but the picking includes many trials. If you want wild blackberries, you must be prepared to invest a lot of time, effort, and inconvenience harvesting them.
Blackberries like to grow in areas with lots of direct sunlight. So, you will be exposed to the sun the whole time you are harvesting them. They ripen during June and July, two of the hottest months in Arkansas. It is hot, sweaty work, with lots of potential for sunburn or dehydration.
Blackberries are defended by thorns. No matter how hard you try, it is impossible to harvest wild blackberries without acquiring a substantial number of pricks and scratches. Then, your sweat from the heat runs into the scratches, making them burn with salt. By the end of a day of picking, your hands and forearms will be a mass of pricks and scratches stained dark by blood and berry juice, and caked with salt from your sweat.
The places that blackberries like to grow are the same places that are likely to be inhabited by parasitic blood-sucking insects, such as ticks, chiggers, horse-flies, and mosquitoes. It is best to protect yourself with insect repellant, but you will still end up with some itchy insect bites, by the end of the day. Of course the insect repellant washes with your sweat and sunblock, into your eyes, making them burn, and into those scratches on your hands and forearms, making them sting.
And, because blackberries like lots of water, they tend to grow in marshy spots that hold moisture. So, there is a reasonably good chance your shoes will get so soaked and muddy that they will squish as you walk. And, of course, between the berries and the water, you have to keep a sharp eye out for snakes and other critters.
Picking wild blackberries is not for the faint of heart. It is a project that requires commitment and dedication. Many people will start out for the berry patch, thinking it sounds like fun, just to tire of the effort within the first 15 minutes, and head back to the cool comfort of an air-conditioned living room, with little to show for their effort, beyond a need for a good shower and change of clothes.
Before you start out to the berry patch, you need to count the cost. You need to know what you’re likely to be facing and make sure you are prepared for the trials likely to be encountered. You won’t get a bucketful of berries in a casual 15 minute walk-by. You’ve got to be ready to get hot, tired, sweaty, sun-burned, bug-bitten, and thorn-pricked, if you want a good day’s berry harvest.
Life Application:
Many things in life that are freely given still require a lot of work before we can benefit from them.
Consider a full academic college scholarship, for example. It is a free gift! Yes, the student probably had to keep their grades up in high school and do well on the college entrance exam, in order to qualify. Still, though, nobody owes the student that money. It is made available to them as a free gift that they can either accept or not accept.
However, if they choose to accept the scholarship, it is just the start of all the hard work required to make full use of the gift. The scholarship covers the monetary cost of the education. However, in order to appropriate that gift of an education, in order to own it and make it theirs, they must commit to regularly attending class, to listening to lectures and taking notes, to reading assignments, to doing their homework, to studying hard for tests, to completing projects, and to asking questions when they don’t understand. Without all the hard work of actually partaking of the education and making it a part of themselves, the free gift of the scholarship is of absolutely no benefit to the student, whatsoever.
The scholarship is a completely free gift providing an educational opportunity that otherwise would not exist. Appropriation of that free gift and actually gaining benefit from it requires a lot of hard work and discipline.
Like the wild blackberries, God’s grace is made available to everyone, free of charge. It has already been made available to everyone, and there is absolutely nothing we can do to earn it or deserve it. It is already made available whether or not we choose to accept it, and is there for the accepting. “For by grace you have been saved, thru faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).
We tend to think that because it is a free gift that it requires no effort, but this is not the case. Yes, God’s grace is offered as a free gift. However, having chosen to accept the free gift, in order for us to benefit from it, for us to appropriate it and make it a part of ourselves, requires a good deal of hard work and discipline, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). The purpose of the free gift of God’s grace is to enable us to do “good works” we would not otherwise be capable of doing. Having now the ability to do good works, we gain the responsibility to carry them out, and good works are…well…work! Hard work!
Jesus did not come so that we could keep living in the blindness and darkness of sin, while still hoping to escape Hell. Jesus came to transform us, from children of darkness to children of light! “…for you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light” (Ephesians 5:8).
Having begun his epistle to the Ephesians emphasizing that God’s grace is a free gift, not of works (Ephesians 2:8-9), Paul goes on to say, “For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolator, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not be partakers with them; for you were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth), trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:5-10).
Sounds like a lot of hard work, doesn’t it? Harder, even, than picking wild blackberries on a hot summer day…or studying for an exam! It sounds like hard work, because it is hard work.
Paul explains in Ephesians 4:22-24, “…in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you may be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.”
God’s goal, in our salvation, is for our very natures to be changed, from desiring and pursuing self-serving sinful desires to desiring and pursuing righteousness, godliness and holiness. God does not force that new nature on us; He never violates our free will.
Rather, he teaches and guides us in the paths of righteousness, as we are daily transformed into His image. That requires a lot of hard work on our part…but would be completely impossible without the transforming presence of the Holy Spirit dwelling in our hearts. Without the Holy Spirit, we would not even desire to be transformed, but would be content to remain in the blind darkness of our sin nature.
The free gift of God’s grace is not to keep us from having to work. Rather it is to instill in us a desire to work and to enable us to work effectively. With the free gift of God’s grace, we can be transformed into the image of Christ, something which would have been completely impossible apart from that grace.
So, accept the free gift of God’s grace, so that you can effectively begin the hard work of appropriating (harvesting) the truth of His word, so you can partake (eat) of His goodness, making it a part of your nature!
It is time to start picking!
Questions (please respond with your answer):
Are we, Christ’s church, sometimes guilty of misrepresenting God’s grace in how we present the gospel? Do we either over-emphasize works or over-emphasize grace to the exclusion of the other?
How can we better present the gospel to give a clearer undertsanding of these points?
Note: The idea for this series of lessons was conceived several years ago, while picking blackberries one hot summer day, with my sister Melody, on her farm in Bee Branch, Arkansas. Thank you, Melody, for the memories, the visiting, and the thought-provoking discussions!