Tomatoes

I love going to a farmers’ market to see the cornucopia of produce available to us for consumption. The profusion of apples, tomatoes, squashes, green vegetables … there is no end to the bounty that is available to us from the farmers’ fields.

Several years ago we were in Abingdon, Virginia and went to the Farmers’ Market there. Here is a sample of the goodies that they had (some of which we purchased).

Abingdon farmers market 2 — Farmer’s market in Abingdon, Virginia.

While we were in Abingdon, we also went to another vendor of fine edibles, the Abingdon vineyard and winery. It was in October, so the vines were dormant and they were certainly not a picture of lush green vines. But the prospect of fine wine in the future was evident by the care and tending of the vines, even in the winter.

Abingdon winery outside 5 — Vineyard during the October rest in winter, tended and cared for by the vinedresser.

But, all was not gray at the winery! God’s beauty was evident in the colors that graced the surrounding landscape.

Abingdon winery outside 7 — Shrubs in their colorful finery at Abingdon Winery during October.

However, back to the farmers’ market. Knoxville has a large farmers’ market that is in multiple locations around town. While I enjoy going to see what is available, another market that I enjoy visiting is the farm store at Carver’s Orchard in Newport, Tennessee.

Carvers orchard 10-2016 - even more apples — Wide variety of apples at Carver’s Orchard in Newport, Tennessee.

Bushel baskets of apples adorn the floors and tables of one side of the farm store, with pickles, jams, jellies, butters, honey, ciders and all sorts of other goodies in jars are along the walls. The orchard is huge and the number and type of apples available is staggering. They even have a chart of various apples showing when they will be harvested.

Carvers orchard 10-2016 - apple chart — Apple chart at Carver’s Orchard showing the type of apple and the timing of harvest.

If you turn to look at the other side of the farm store, you will find a variety of other produce some of which is grown at their farm while the rest is from other local farmers. For example, there will be tomatoes, Vidalia onions, pumpkins, potatoes (both white and sweet), gourds, etc.

Carvers orchard 10-2016 - tomatoes — Bounteous tomatoes available at the orchard farm store.

This is not meant to be an advertisement for any specific company or place. Rather, these pictures and comments are intended to shake us out of our apathy, out of our whining about inconveniences and problems, out of our misguided belief that the universe revolves around us or that all we see around us is the result of our work alone.

I fervently pray that the pictures will reawaken our gratitude to God for His great bounty bestowed upon our country. And I pray that we will remember the source of the bounty that farmers present on market day.

“You [God] cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth and wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine and bread to strengthen man’s heart.”

Psalm 104:14-15 ESV

I pray that we will honor the One who is the source of our very breath, who gives our bodies the strength for each heartbeat, who gives us the opportunity and ability to do our work, and who is the Lover of our souls.

“These all look to you, to give them their food in due season. When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust.”

Psalm 104:27-29 ESV

God’s blessings have been showered on our country for hundreds of years, and for a great many of those years we remembered that He is the source of the harvest. However, in more recent times, it appears that we have forgotten, both as a country and as individuals, that God is the One who provides His bounty for us.

When He is ignored, when we claim that all this came from our own labor, when we take the glory that is rightfully His and claim it for ourselves, we have replaced Him with idols of our own making. This, my beloved, is sin. It is rank disobedience and God will not continue blessing us if we continue in unrepentant sin.

The problem is that God is holy and He WILL NOT share worship with other gods. This is a problem that is as old as … well all the way back thousands of years when Israel would copy worship of the peoples around them, while still saying that they worshiped God. They were taken as captives and moved away from their land, and this was said about the experience:

“And this occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods…”

2 Kings 17:7 ESV

Scripture continues:

“The LORD made a covenant with them and commanded them, ‘You shall not fear other gods or bow yourselves to them or serve them or sacrifice to them, but you shall fear the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt with great power and with an outstretched arm. You shall bow yourselves to him, and to him you shall sacrifice. And the statutes and the rules and the law and the commandment that he wrote for you, you shall always be careful to do. You shall not fear other gods, and you shall not forget the covenant that I have made with you. You shall not fear other gods, but you shall fear the LORD your God, and he will deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies.’ “

2 Kings 17:35-39 ESV. But, the next verse makes an extraordinarily sad pronouncement:

“However, they would not listen, but they did according to their former manner.”

2 Kings 17:40 ESV

Fearing [reverencing], worshiping, and honoring God is neither a suggestion nor an option on the multiple choice test of life. It is a commandment, and it is a commandment that God takes very seriously.

Let us all examine ourselves and see if there is any sin in us;

if we have refused to give God the honor due His Name,
if we have ignored God’s commandments and have flaunted our freedom so that we have trampled on His Word,
if we, in our pride, have claimed to be the creator of our own abundance,
if we have refused to repent when the Spirit has convicted us of our sin,
if we have given lip service to the worship of God while we, at the same time, worship other gods such as money, fame, family, position, ___you fill in the blank____!

Scripture tells us that there is a remedy to this situation – there is hope that God will continue to bless us. In Second Chronicles we read:

“if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

2 Chronicles 7:14 ESV

It is not too late – if we as His people will humble ourselves in prayer and repent and seek Him while we turn from sin and look to Him alone, God will hear us and will save us and heal both us and our land.

Father, enable us to see ourselves as You see us … then let us flee to the cross of Your Son and repent of our sin so that His righteousness can be imputed to us and we can live in the light of Your grace. Then, I pray that you would heal our land.

When I think of living in the season, the first thing my mind turns to is the Preacher in Scripture and his admonition that “for everything there is a season”. Ecclesiastes 3:1-2 reads:

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;…

In Psalm 104:27-28 we read:

These all look to you, to give them their food in due season. When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.

Eating “in-season” … it’s Scriptural and, therefore, we should take a good hard look at it!

When we were in England several years ago, my Daughter-in-Love received a box every week from a nearby farmer with vegetables that were just then harvested by him. Many of them I had never seen before, let alone eaten, but he put in recipes and directions about how to prepare the vegetables in the box. I thought, then, that it would be fun to get vegetables from farmers instead of only in grocery stores.

Later, there were so many stories of Hep C, bacterias, and all sorts of illnesses traceable to tainted food, so I decided to check out getting produce from a nearby farm to minimize the number of hands that touched the produce that we ultimately ate at our dinner table.

Eggplant, Zucchini, Summer Squash and Acorn Squash from vegetable box.

I did some reading and discovered the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement. Basically, you buy a share of the farmer’s crop by paying a monetary amount in January or February, thus becoming a shareholder in the crop for the year. Then, when the farmer’s produce begins coming in, you receive a box of vegetables directly from the farmer once per week. The box contains some of each of the crops ready for harvest so you are eating with the seasons. And, you receive some vegetables that you may never have purchased in the grocery store, thereby expanding your culinary tastes to include more veggies than corn!

We decided to participate in a CSA and then looked for one we liked near our city. We found The Colvin Family Farm. You can learn about them from their website at http://www.colvinfamilyfarm.com. The most wonderful surprise was that this is a Christian family-owned farm and they use the farm as a witness to the grace of the Lord and His providential bounty. The farmer’s wife has a blog, fittingly entitled The Farmer’s Wife, where she details life on the farm for her big family, where she describes the various crops are and how to use the vegetables in the box, and also where she provides a witness to her love for the Lord and His grace in her life. (The blog for this week talked about living spicy, with various peppers!) http://tnfarmerswife.blogspot.com/

We received our vegetable box today and I was prompted to think about living in the moment. Eating in season, eating what the Lord has provided today, not craving for what will be coming later. Being satisfied with today’s provision. For some, this is a very different mindset.

Cucumber, Curley Kale and Tomato from vegetable box.

The Hebrews in the wilderness learned this lesson when the Lord provided manna and quails for them to eat. In Exodus 16:15-26 we read about when the people were first introduced to manna. It was found on the ground in the morning and they were instructed to gather enough for each person in their house to eat for that day. They were not to save anything for the next day, unless it was the Sabbath – if they were to do so, in the morning they would find worms and decay rather than fresh manna.

In other words, they were instructed to eat one day at a time – and to eat what was provided in-season for them. Later, when they were no longer in the wilderness, the Lord instituted the feast of first-fruits where the people were to offer the first fruits from the harvest to the Lord. They still ate in-season.

In Matthew chapter 6, Jesus said that we should not worry about tomorrow, about what we should eat or wear, because our Heavenly Father knows that we need these things and they will be provided.

Eggplant, Cucumber, Yellow and Purple Peppers from vegetable box.

Eating our vegetables from the box has been fun for us and it has taught us a renewed appreciation for the variety that God has provided for food in His world. I would encourage you to consider participating in a CSA. Alternatively, I would encourage you to eat vegetables that you can purchase from farmer’s markets as they will be fresh and the variety from the crops will encourage some tasty changes to your family’s menu!

Praise the Lord for the provision of food that is found in abundance and in a variety that creates exciting mealtime adventures.