life. faithful.

 It's springtime in the Arkansas Ozarks, so that means it's time to play in the dirt! Well, I guess it's not technically playing in the dirt...I was actually working on prepping the ground for our garden. We've had a small garden the past few years, one we've tried to extend a tiny bit each year.   And because this is Arkansas, expanding a garden means digging up a whole lot of rocks. Sometimes, I think that's actually what my garden grows...just rock after rock. I've tossed rocks out each year that I've worked the ground, but that doesn't stop them from working their way up to the surface. I don't mind it too much, though. There's something almost meditative about tossing the little rocks out of the soil, knowing that it will make my garden better. This year, though, I decided I wanted to try something new. We've got a bunch of farm animals, and I would love to be able to grow some of the things we feed them through the winter when they ...

Probably close to 20 years ago, my sister and I taught the preschool class for VBS. The theme that year was Creation, so our room was decorated with all sorts of colorful, unique examples of plants and animals. Among those decorations was a basket of wax fruit, made to look remarkably life-like. The first morning, we noticed that one little girl had something red around her mouth that hadn't been there when she was dropped off. The quick investigation revealed one of those wax fruits--a bright red apple--held in her hand, hidden behind her back, with two neat rows of teeth marks in it. We explained that the apple was fake, even if it looked real, and that she couldn't really eat it. We moved the basket from the table to a place that was a bit more out of the way and didn't think anything else about it--until the next morning. Again, we noticed the red around her lips. We asked her if she had taken a bite of the fake apple again. She smiled and nodded and pulled the wax appl...

We talk all the time about bearing fruit. The Fruit of the Spirit is well known (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, & self-control), and we spend a lot of time talking about how followers of Christ are to be known by their fruit. I think, though, that we forget what it takes to bear fruit. In John 15:2, Jesus was talking about His Father and said, "He leaves those bearing fruit and carefully prunes them so they will bear more fruit." Prune. It's such a small word, but it holds so much significance. At first it might bring to mind a picture of somebody snipping back one or two leaves here and there, maybe taking an ugly leaf or a dead branch. But here's the thing: when you prune something back for producing fruit, you typically take a lot off. Since Jesus used the picture of a vineyard, we might as well look at that, too. When someone is trying to get a good crop of grapes, they cut back all the pretty stuff. The vines...