Orchard, Preach.

Ochs Orchard, Warwick, New York.

[Today we take a short break from the blog posts on Sunday's sermon. Our reflections on awareness, advocacy, and action will resume tomorrow.]

In our walking through various trials of life, there are moments when God allows His people to come alongside and support us with their presence and prayers. There are other moments when all seems mist and darkness and looming shadows of death, paths full of rocks and potholes, journeys that we cannot walk in the company of men… dyadic moments where it’s just one servant and One Master… and in those moments we discover the incredible love of God as He sustains us.

But in the moments where it seems that only God cares, there are stirrings and undercurrents. There are communities and connections, ordained by God, that suddenly become aware that there is a need to pray. They do not always know why the need exists. They just know that God has supplied a name, so they kneel before Him and call the name of the one who is taking his turn in the valley. Such is the great gift of Spirit-led prayer.

I am blessed to belong to a community like that at my home church. I am blessed to have connections like that outside of my home church—some local, some very far away. And I hope that you, too, are blessed to experience that sort of community in your own life.

I mention all of this because I had an interesting experience this past Monday. On a day trip to a country farm, I spent a few hours walking through an apple orchard. There were many trees, old and young. All were well-tended. Some were bearing fruit in season. Some were not. For the first time I saw with my own eyes a tree that had cast its fruit: its once-beautiful apples now rotting and lying on the ground, a once-full tree now completely empty and finished, through the amazing phenomenon of pitching its own fruit from its branches. Fruit useless for man, but still useful for ants and small creatures. (God, in His mercy, even pulls blessings out of decaying fruit.)

And, some trees were on their way to bearing. Their fruit was not yet ready for consumption, but it was growing. It was beautiful. Trees whose fruit will not be brought to any table today… but perhaps in two or three weeks.

On Monday, as I walked in the country farm, God used this fine orchard of apples to stir my heart to prayer. Not scatter-shot prayers for comfort and safety. Not foxhole prayers for rescue. But prayers for having the patience of the farmer. Prayers for understanding and embracing the cooperative intervention of heat and cold and sun and rain. Prayers for wisdom to know the times of planting, pruning, picking, and pitching. Prayers of gratitude for God’s harvests here and abroad. Prayers for the people of the world who walk with the support of seen communities, and prayers for those who, though apparently alone, are being undergirded by the prayers of unknown others.

Today, readers, be encouraged. The Lord knows where you stand in His orchard. His people stand with you in prayer. May you be found as a bearer of good fruit.

Yes: even though I am walking through mist and darkness, I am completely fearless. Have you met my Lord? He is here, walking with me, explaining to me the times and seasons. And He is there, in all the places “there” exists. He is breathing men’s names into His trusted communities and sending His Spirit to interpret the prayers, to erase the lines between earth and heaven, and to make pathways for the entrance of profound miracles. One cannot ask for a greater assurance than this.

Thank You, Lord, for the lesson of the orchard.