Pumpkin Surprise: Bearing Fruit in Season

 

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

When my daughter and family came to visit last month, my son-in-law trimmed a bush for me. He discarded the debris at the edge of the yard and returned with two baby pumpkins. Imagine my surprise when I saw them. How did they get there?  

                                       

The Way Home

Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

—John 6:35

 

I call it a funk—this melancholy mood, this heavy heart I’ve been carrying around all week. This week after Easter, after all my family members have returned to their homes and schedules have returned to normal. Except nothing has felt normal to me. Nothing has felt like home.

 

“Please pray for me,” I asked my friends. And I prayed for myself, Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God (Psalm 42:5).

Dust it off!

Lord, be gracious to us; we long for you. Be our strength every morning, our salvation in time of distress.--Isaiah 33:2

I wearily entered my classroom at the start of the day and switched on my desk lamp.  Light flooded my desktop revealing coffee rings and a layer of dust too thick for me to tolerate a minute more.  I yanked a saturated wipe from the dispenser and pushed away piles of papers.  Scrubbing away coffee stains, I eyed the rest of the mess decorating my desktop. 

A handmade card, an origami crane, a starfish, a plastic frog, a puzzle cube, and a pencil sharpener disguised as a little smiley-faced blue man who seemed to say, “Here I am, ready to serve!”  I laughed and shook my head.  What an odd assortment of items!  How did this collection find its way here? 

Then I remembered.