Marybeth and I started our farm with pumpkins in mind. So we are stoked that only a week after planting day our pumpkins are popping up. It is hard to believe that from this small sprout will come some of the largest pumpkins ever witnessed in North America. But then we couldn’t picture only a week ago that the seed would so quickly produce this sprout.
It is not only with pumpkins that we are seeing results. We diversified our farming operation and added green beans so that all our seeds would not be solely in the pumpkin basket.Our green beans are already sprouting.
Marybeth brought up to me Isaiah 40:8, “The grass withers, and the flower fades, but the word of God stands forever Isaiah 40:8.” Marybeth (who has perhaps heard too much of my exposition) wrote these words:
If you are having a hard time you may want to think about this verse. Are you having a hard time at work? If you do the grass withered. Are the bills getting too expensive? If they are then the flowers faded. But the word of god endures forever. And the word of God says that, God is with you,and is watching you. So next time you think about how the grass withers in your life remember this verse.
We know that our pumpkins will be here one day, and gone soon after that. So goes life. It is a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes (James 4:13-17).
Even as our youngest, Marybeth, and I work together in our garden, our oldest Allison has graduated from high school. In fact, seeing how quickly a daughter graduates has given me extra incentive to plant a garden.
Yesterday, Allison was born. Tomorrow is her graduation open house . . . so I am gardening with her sister, hoping to savor every second.
These little seeds of pumpkins or of little girls, if tended with love and care, will someday have their own little seeds or their own little girls. From this vantage point, the Brauns have tended their gardens well.
Thanks K!
Little Boys grow up over night. So do little boy GRANDSONS. Robert Jr is at least a foot taller than me…also taller than Mom and Dad! So is Jacob Ryne Barker who grew up in Lexington, KY, and just graduated from high school. He is off to the Navy to get his college education (part of it while in the Navy). He was going to go for Navy Seals, but he did not pass some kind of “color blindness test” so is going into the Medics. He said it was not like difference between Primary and Secondary Colors, but in blends of colors to make grays and less recognizable combinations of colors…or something like that to put it in his words.
Happy Gardening!!
BB
Marybeth,
Thank you for your words regarding Isaiah 40:8.
They were both a good reminder and a great encouragement.
Berardine’s note regarding her grandson’s color blindness keeping him from his chosen field in the military brought back a clear memory of what happened with my #1 son, Douglas. He enlisted in the Army when he was 19 and was training in intelligence dept. to monitor intercepts using morse code. During his training at a base in New England area, he was diagnosed with ‘color blindness’ to certain shades of colors only. He was very upset and called to tell me they were washing him out of that particular field.
I got on the phone to that base, made contact with the company chaplain who looked into it for us and after some discussion on the chaplain’s part with the instructors, it was determined that Doug’s type of color blindness would not be an issue at all since they no longer even used the colored wiring, wiring (colored or otherwise was not even an issue), but the specs had never been changed on that job!
Doug kept his place in that field and went on to serve 2 years at a base in Germany monitoring Russian dispatches which was about the most difficult station they had at the time.
So this is a similar story…but, I’m guessing that the Navy Seals would have their skill sets matched to the actual requirements.