Easter Thoughts

Well, its an Easter evening around here and I have a few spare minutes to sit on down and relax at the old computer. The day was good, very good! Church took up allot more time than normal and that was OK with me. Chores went slick this morning and I got done really quick and was able to ramble on to church with the old three quarter ton flatbed Chev. Everyone else went a tad bit earlier from this family so I had to drive solo in the old truck. Made er though and that’s a praise in itself! Had a deer running right down the road straight at that old truck when I was in the hills driving on an up and down tarred township road. Seeing I was only going thirty miles an hour on that narrow hogback road I wasn’t taken too much by surprise and the deer musta figured out that it wasn’t good to run straight into that old Chevy so he bounded off into the woods on the side. I’m not really all that hungry for road kill venison at the moment anyhow so that was OK with me today.

The day was fairly nice this later morning and some of us were able to stand outside of church and shoot the bull a bit. What a relief to have winter pretty much over with! There was an Easter egg hunt for the youngsters in the little town our church is in, in fact it was put on by the church. The kids made a killing with candy and a few other prizes and I just watched all satisfied! Oh, to have that simple fun again like those kids can have at any given moment. Plus many of the kids gave Pastor Tom an offering, some candy from their stashes and I guess I wasn’t complaining as I was munching away! Train em young to take care of the people that have the call I say!

And with evening here there’s only a few things to get ready for this coming week’s midweek service. I figure I can work like a bear the rest of the evenings and just make it to the Wednesday service, break up the huge load of work for the week and get recharged to hit er harder the next day. There’s oats to clean for seed this week too, that sometimes take the better part of the day but is well worth it. When you have the seed that works on your particular farm, stick with it! I don’t know why, but I’m really optimistic about this year’s growing season!

Now this being Easter and all I start thinking about planting seeds, about something dead coming to life. Something we have no control over. We clean the grain in faith, we get the fields ready in faith and we plant the seeds in faith. And last evening in my nightly reading of the Bible I reread these verses that explain it so plainly! From Mark chapter 4,

Parable of the Growing Seed

²⁶ Jesus also said, “The Kingdom of God is like a farmer who scatters seed on the ground. ²⁷ Night and day, while he’s asleep or awake, the seed sprouts and grows, but he does not understand how it happens. ²⁸ The earth produces the crops on its own. First a leaf blade pushes through, then the heads of wheat are formed, and finally the grain ripens. ²⁹ And as soon as the grain is ready, the farmer comes and harvests it with a sickle, for the harvest time has come.”

Now that’s what I love about the Bible, about the Gospels in particular, a country feller like me can make sense out of them! Those seeds don’t really look all that action packed when a person is handling them or just taking a look at them. They’re just little things that get planted in the ground and if a person really and truthfully didn’t know what was happening it would never make a lick of sense, to be putting those things in the ground, really it doesn’t! But we know that it does work, we know what to expect. Plants should appear from almost every seed that was put in the ground.And a person has to modernize this a tad too. Because most of the time a farmer ain’t out there scattering seed by hand, although I have done that once in a while, here and there. We use a planter, a grain drill for small grains such as oats and barley and a corn planter for corn. A big difference between the two. And after its planted, especially with small grains, there’s not a thing that a person really does with the crop until harvest time. Plant in late April or early May and don’t touch the crop until late July, early August. Then comes the harvest and most of the time there’s a good one, and even on the bad years there’s always something to harvest.

The thing that strikes me in that parable is the similarity to spreading the Gospel, which I do believe is the main point of course here. Our job is to plant that seed, just like the farmer in the parable or the farmer writing this. It don’t hurt to take extra care preparing the fields because that makes a huge difference in the harvest! It don’t hurt getting into the Word every single day to make sure the seed germination percentage is high. No sense planting poor seed. It don’t hurt walking the walk, talking the talk, being a true living example of Christ on this here earth! And the time will come when the harvest is ripe and ready to be cut and combined. Where the shakers and fans blow out the bad seed, the weed seed and poor light grain that one does not want in the storage bins.

This Easter I’m just dwelling on this. How easy it is to understand the planting and harvesting written about in the Gospel. Keep er simple and its easy to understand. Spread the Good News in faith that it will soon sprout and grow. Have the faith of a farmer or a rancher that knows that he must do the initial work and after that the Lord promises to take care of the growing and the ripening. And then comes the harvest! The more I get into the Word, the more I am coming to realize the simplicity of it. Those yoke destroying promises from a risen saviour that loves every single person right where they are at. Easter reminds a person of that although I guess I should be reminded of that ever day. Sure wouldn’t hurt none! He is risen to set people free! If we only understood that more, if we only would have the faith to throw off the shackles that bind us and be Christians like in the Book of Acts, believers that had such simple faith that God moved mightily with them. He still does today, exactly the same as in the Book of Acts, that is if we let Him.

On a closing note this evening, this Easter evening, I had a brother in Christ tell me something this week that struck deep into my heart. So many times we invite folks to church, we try and witness to them and get a cold shoulder, mainly from the folks being religious. They very seldom go to church but have some way out teaching that they were baptized as a baby, or got confirmed as a teen and they might make it to heaven if there is in reality such a place. My brother in Christ mentioned the parable about the King inviting all the normal people to the wedding and everyone had an excuse not to show up. As I say, this really was thrust deep into my heart, confirmed by the Holy Ghost. The parable goes on to have the King say, go through the countryside and invite all the poor, the lonely, the sick, the rejected, (Tom’s translation here so forgive me). I must say, this was a confirmation to what’s been on my heart for a long time now, to fill the pews with the downcasts of society, the sick, the lonely, the folks that would hardly be welcome in a normal church setting today with the dead religion or the lust for material wealth that is so accepted among the western masses that call themselves Christians. This is the meaning of Easter to me! These are the people Jesus hung around with, these are the people that followed Him! These are the people that believed and were healed of every disease and malady. And these are the people that need Jesus today and who will believe like they did back then!