Last week in “The Harvest,” neglect brought consequence. This week: what happens when you do everything right, and winter still comes hungry. Part 2.
March. You planted. Twenty feet of garden. Enough to feed you through winter if you tended it right.
You tended it right.
May mornings before work, pulling weeds while dew still clung to the leaves. June evenings, watering during the heat, checking for pests, staking the tomatoes as they climbed. Your hands were tender from blisters left by weathered, cracked wooden handles. Your back ached.
July brought the first fruit. The sun-etched lines on your forehead disappeared as you smiled with pride.
August. The plants hung thick with almost-ready harvest. Two more weeks, maybe three. You’d done everything your grandfather taught you.
September twentieth. 4:47 PM.
The sky went green. Hail the size of golf balls fell for eighteen minutes.
Shredded leaves. Broken stalks beaten into the mud. Tomatoes split open on the ground, already rotting. Beans stripped from their vines. Every plant… destroyed.
You stood in the aftermath, trying to understand what you’d done wrong. Nothing. You’d done nothing wrong.
November. Thanksgiving. The pantry holds canned corn and boxed mac-and-cheese. The freezer is nearly empty. Winter is coming, and you have nothing stored.
Someone suggests going around the table, saying what you’re grateful for. They’re waiting for you to start.
You remember the equation: tend what matters, harvest abundance. Work faithfully, receive provision. Show up, be blessed.
Eighteen minutes of ice proved the equation is incomplete.
You sit at the table, hands still calloused from faithful work and try to find words for gratitude. The turkey came from the food bank. You were promised you wouldn’t need charity.
Outside, the first snow begins to fall on the dead garden.
The Gospel of Prosperity
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Well, written. Takes me back to the days we had a “Victory Garden”. I helped my dad during the second world war. We would have disappointments, but we always had food on our table. Some happy times and some discouraging times. I feel for this person. Keep the stories coming, Jim. Thank you!!
Dick, thank you for sharing that memory. The Victory Garden generation understood what it meant to tend what matters—and that sometimes the harvest doesn’t cooperate. Grateful you’re reading.
Gratitude for the food bank you never thought you would need.
Exactly. When faithfulness doesn’t protect you from needing help you thought you’d never need.
Ah…
The other side of the coin. When we seemingly do everything right and are left wanting…
It’s hard to hold our heads up when defeated, especially by the ravages of nature (and Act of God)
In these times we learn to be humble. To trust that God will provide…even if it is through a football.
Life isn’t always a quid pro quo. That’s where faith fills in the gaps.
Your writing here is intensely descriptive. I felt the gravity and the despair…
And still my final thought was God will provide!
Correction.
(Whoops)
Football was “Foodbank” erroneously autocorrected.
Sorry!
“Life isn’t always a quid pro quo. That’s where faith fills in the gaps.” You articulated what I hoped you would. This Thanksgiving, as we go around the table, I will remember my gratitude for our friendship.
Jim…your recent entries drew a visceral response from me. Word pictures compelling. Word selections elegant. One exception “ baseball bat” struck me as blunt within your otherwise delicate and sensitive pattern.
Thanks for including me in your distribution.
? You showed me the one of a kind story you’d written for your granddaughter (?) following a recent reunion of your wife’s family. You’d just picked up the printed story and we’re looking forward to giving it to her. Did you? Reaction?
Ann
Thank you, Ann. Excellent instinct on the “baseball bat” image. That line now reads:
Every plant… destroyed.
Three words now do the work of a full sentence. I respect and appreciate your feedback—you made the story better.
Thank you for remembering our conversation. I actually wrote the story and created the keepsake for my six-year-old niece, Lily. She was the star of the show and has requested the magician (Bill) to perform at her birthday party next year. While she is a bit young to understand it, hopefully she will one day treasure it.
Here is the story and some pictures: A Magical Reunion
I am honored to have you as a reader, Ann. Take care.