I Peter 3:15
“Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.”
This story is not about tomatoes, and yet it is about tomatoes. One of the many things I love to eat is a juicy, ripe tomato, fresh from the vine at peak season. After enduring months of second rate hot-house attempts at producing the real thing, oh, how sweet to taste the real thing!
One summer Joyce and I were returning from a trip to Idaho to visit my mother. It was a little late in the tomato season, but I had hoped to buy some before returning to Olympia. We stopped at a service station on the high desert of Oregon where I asked the attendant if there were any fruit stands around so I could buy tomatoes.
“You go down to the end of this road, turn left and go until you see this big green house then keep your eyes peeled for some sheep grazing in a pasture. After that there will be a driveway that crosses a little creek. Go down that driveway until you come to the end, and they may have some stuff left.”
I must have been out of my mind to try to follow such directions, but I was desperate for those home grown tomatoes. (As a matter of fact, I found the place and we were rewarded with a basket full of round, red and sweet tomatoes).
As I recall that incident, I think about our spiritual obligation to give directions to people who want to find their way to heaven. We can make it simple or we can make it so complex that it takes a genius to figure it out. Jesus gave simple directions, as recorded in John 3:16, to a brilliant scholar named Nicodemus: “For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that He [even] gave up His only begotten (unique) Son, so that whoever believes in (trusts in, clings to, relies on) Him shall not perish (come to destruction, be lost) but have eternal (everlasting) life.” These are the directions to heaven—have you followed them yet?
Blessings dear hearts. Draw near to God today, trust Him completely and be a blessing!
– – – Pastor Cecil
360-570-0074
PastorCecil@Daily-E-Votional.com