First Fruits

 

I had forced myself on because of the Googled reassurance:

Pick off all first blooms to ensure subsequent harvests are more plentiful.”

If I ever intended for the everbearing berries to produce heavily throughout the season, I had to choose to sacrifice the first harvest so that all the growth and energy could be more efficiently invested into producing later crops.

So that is what I do:  Trim. Pare. Cut back. 

It’s like a song:

Pick, Prune,  Pluck.

Cut out that which seems good to invest in the best.

That’s what the garden needed in early spring.

And come late summer, looking out into the fall, the calendar, it needs the same.

The law of the garden is the law of life: Early sacrifice for later bounty.

Ann Voskamp

 

It never ceases to amaze me how God gives the “ah-ha” moments to us…

how He gives us the “oh yeh” times in our lives.

I read the above quote this morning and my mind immediately went to the Feast of First Fruits, to the laws and precepts and statutes and commands that God gave the Israelite when He brought them out of Egypt… into the wilderness and began preparing them for the promised land.

 

  “Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them,

‘When you enter the land which I am going to give to you and reap its harvest,

then you shall bring in the sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest to the priest.'”

Leviticus 23:10

They were to enter the land and they were to plant the seed and they were to work the soil and then when they finally saw the benefits of their work they were to give it away… to the priest… to God. I wonder if they knew? I wonder if they knew that God commanded this because by giving Him this reaping He would ensure them an even greater harvest later? Did they know?

On this side of the cross do we know?

After thousands of years of having the benefit of the truth of God in written form… do we get it?

If we will offer this life…  if we will give God this birth, this body, this day… He ensures us an even greater life later.

Whoever seeks to keep his life will lose it,

and whoever loses his life will preserve it.

Luke 17:33

This morning I also read this from John Piper’s blog digest,

John G. Paton and his wife set sail to the islands in 1858. But this decision didn’t come without criticism. On one account before leaving, a respected elder chided the couple, “You will be eaten by cannibals!” To which Paton responded,

“Mr. Dickson, you are advanced in years now, and your own prospect is soon to be laid in the grave, there to be eaten by worms; I confess to you, that if I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by Cannibals or by worms.”

Paton didn’t play. He was a courageous man who understood how to do missions when dying is gain. God is sovereign, and Paton knew it. He endured one threat after another and put it all on the line for the glory of Christ.
We have a choice to make very day. We can choose to give our life to God or we can choose to keep it for ourselves. If we keep the first fruits, if we refuse to pluck off what we see is good… we can not receive God’s best. Yes we will get some pleasure from the good. But it won’t last… and then what follows will only get worse… not better.
I agree with Mrs. Voskamp and I too believe that the law of the garden is the law of life.

Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above,

coming down from the Father of lights, 

with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. 

In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth,

so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures. 

James 1:17-18

Will you be a first fruit?

Will you sacrifice the things in this world that you deem as good and trust God for the best?

What “good” thing have you been holding on to that you know God has told you to bring to the altar?

Comments

2 thoughts on “First Fruits”

  1. Very thought provoking topics here, thanks for sharing Nicole. Love & prayers, in Jesus, Cynthia

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