God's Bounty


Next to my house is an old hedgerow, in that hedgerow at this time of year one can find apples laden with fruit, and an abundance of blackberries and rosehips. A short walk down the path and you there are cobnuts, wild garlic, and depending on the season elderflowers or elderberries. There are also numerous birds in the sky, fish in the river, rabbits, deer and other wild animals live close by. Walking past this hedgerow today I reflected on the bounty of the natural world that God created and created us to live in, I found it amazing that in parallel to our lives where we live in a complex and exacting network of relationships and activities that ensure that we have a roof over our heads and food on our tables, that there exists a simpler world, a natural world, where one can still find the abundance that God promises in spite of hundreds of years of destruction wrought upon it by humanity.

Throughout scripture God's promises to bless his people - "your carts overflow with abundance" (Psalm 65:11); "They feast on the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights." (Psalms 36:8) - and the evidence of those numerous promises are there all around us if we just open our eyes. Which is why, even if we don't benefit from God's natural bounty, we should always give thanks when we see evidence of it. You never know, we may have to turn to it some day if the mechanics of humanity fail us. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pompus?

Reading James the other day I was quite surprised to find the word “religious”. There in the midst of my favourite book of the Bible was a word that frequent readers of my blog will know often raises some comment from myself, if not my hackles, especially in a 21 st  century context. So, when I saw it there, having never noticed it before for some reason, I had to do some digging (vernacular for research) on why this word was used. A quick search revealed that “religious”, or “religion” is not a common word in the Bible, in fact it is only used 6 times, twice in James in quick session, three times in Acts, once in Colossians. Referring to one of the heavy tombs available to me in the form of Strong's Concordance - in fact although I do possess a copy I cheated and enquired of it online - I discovered that in Greek religious was θρησκὸς (thrēskos) and that it “refers probably to a careful observance of religious restrictions” and in a limited sense, it may mean devout. Further enqui...
Read more

Choose the Red Pill!

Image
  What we read in the closing chapters of Deuteronomy is both amazing and terrifying; God knew that in spite of all he had done and was about to do for Israel, that the people would still go ahead and rebel. He knew that they would, they knew that they would, and they knew that he knew they would, but they still did it. For me this speaks volumes about two things:  One is that we have complete and total free will before God, I utterly reject the doctrine of predestination because I believe that no matter how you package it, or what intellectual gymnastics you do with it, this cannot allow for free will. For the Old and New testaments and Gods message therein to be relevant then free will has to stand unadulterated.  Secondly, the wilfulness of the human condition; like Cypher in the matrix movie who, even though he knew that the matrix was an illusion, chose that illusion over the reality of freedom (you can watch it here ). We are presented with an excellent  analog...
Read more

Preaching to the Converted

As I have done myself of numerous occasions along with multitudes of preachers in a church context, I delivered sermons that were just telling people what they know already, telling them how it was. Yes this often involved clarifying points of scripture and encouraging people in their faith, but the messages whilst not falling on deaf ears was generally just going over somewhat familiar ground but in a new way. What we might call 'Preaching to the Converted'. However, in some cases a preacher will actually challenge the converted, assaulting the listeners ears and their faith, and getting them to ask themselves where they actually stand with God. Today I had the pleasure of one such sermon preached by a dear friend of mine at a local Baptist Church.  Speaking on Ezekiel 37 - the Valley of the Dry Bones - the preacher challenged us to reflect on our own situation, our own faith, our own Christianity by asking if we were in fact Dry Bones; did we come to church faithfully every S...
Read more