Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Reap What Jesus Sowed

If you’re a gardener, you know the joy of harvesting fruits or vegetables that you’ve grown yourself.

You get to savour the fresh, delicious taste of home-grown produce. You’re quite literally enjoying the fruits of your labour.

Is there anything more satisfying?

How about reaping the benefits of what someone else has grown?

Perhaps you have a neighbour who gives you the excess from their own vegetable garden?

Or better yet, maybe you were as fortunate as a friend of mine. She and her family moved away from the big city a few years ago and bought a house in the suburbs, which sat on a large lot.

The previous owners of the house were botanists, so they had packed the property with beautiful and unusual perennials and shrubs. They’d also planted a number of fruit trees.

My friend and her family moved in mid-year, and didn’t need to do a lick of work in the mini-orchard in their new backyard. All they had to do was sit back and enjoy it, harvesting the fruit from trees that someone else had planted.

This reminds me of a verse from the Old Testament. Moses was telling the children of Israel that God would one day bring them into the Promised Land. Here’s how he described it:

“… a land with great and splendid cities that you did not build, with houses full of every good thing with which you did not fill them, with wells that you did not dig, and with vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant...” (Deuteronomy 6:10-12)

To me, this is a picture of what Christ has done for us.

In the old law-based covenant you reaped what you sowed, but in the new grace-based covenant we reap what Christ has sown.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

God Is Always At Work

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

On Labour Day, we get a welcome day off. But even so, our minds aren’t very far from matters concerning work.

Here’s a question about work that people often bring up:

Why is it that when traffic is diverted around “Men At Work” signs on the road, we often don’t see anyone doing any actual work?

Sometimes the construction zone is deserted, and work on the project seems to be at a standstill. And yet vehicles are still forced to circumvent the area.

At other times there might be a few workers milling about and talking, or peering down an open maintenance hole. But again, lanes are blocked off and traffic is being slowed down for seemingly very little reason.

We naturally find this very annoying. The disruptions and delays would be easier to handle if we could actually see some work getting done, some real progress being made.

Sometimes we show the same impatience with God, don’t we?

We have prayers that we want Him to answer, and things in our lives that we want Him to change. But we get frustrated when nothing seems to be happening.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

God Takes Us “As-Is”

Image by Paul Brennan from Pixabay

When choosing a new place to live, we like things to be move-in ready, don’t we?

We want a home where we don’t need to make any repairs. We don’t want to deal with wonky stairs, leaky faucets, frightful wallpaper, or dated fixtures.

We shy away from a house that requires a lot of work. We think: let someone else take on that mess. We want something in perfect condition.

We seem to have a built-in bias against any product that has a few “issues.” When we see something at a store that is discounted and marked “As-Is,” we don’t want it. We figure there’s something wrong with it.

Thankfully, God doesn’t see us that way.

He takes us as-is.

He doesn’t mind our messes, broken places, wonky personalities, quirks, or frightful attitudes.

God doesn’t shy away from our “issues.” He takes us as we are.

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