For some reason I have been in a bit of a nostalgic mood here lately. Perhaps it was my phone conversation last week with my Aunt who I hadn’t talked to since my Dad passed away 27 years ago, maybe it was my conversation with my sister, talking about all of the old pictures that she had received of our family, most of whom are no longer with us, or maybe it was my canning excursion that took me back to a simpler, less hectic time.
I was telling my congregations yesterday how much I despised working in the garden when I was a kid. My Dad had a humongous garden that seemed to need some type of attention every single day, and the last thing I wanted to do was to get out in the hot sun and tend vegetables. Besides, I enjoyed vegetables almost as much as I enjoyed working in the garden, so if I didn’t eat them, why should I have to help grow them? At least that was the way a 10 year old mind worked.
I remember Dad coming into my room at the awful hour of 8 am announcing that it was time to get up, that we had work to do. When I finally staggered up and out, I could see that Dad had already been down to the garden and pulled up a wagon full of beans and piled them as tall as me under the shade tree in the front yard with Mom already hard at work picking them off the vines. One thing that Dad never liked doing was picking beans, so he would plant beans that would produce all about the same time so that he could pull up the entire plant rather than sit out in the field and pick the beans off. The rest of the morning was then spent with the whole family picking the beans and putting them in bushel baskets. Of course Dad was never content with just one pile that was as tall as me, no, as soon as he got us started working he would head back down to the garden and pull up some additional rows just for fun.
About lunch time, our task of picking the beans would be done and we could go back inside, (thank goodness for air conditioning) have lunch, flip the TV on to WGN and the Chicago Cubs game, spending the rest of afternoon breaking the beans that we had picked off. The next day Mom and my sister Verna would can the beans. I didn’t have much to do with that because I don’t think they wanted me hanging around the kitchen. I remember one year that Mom canned over 1000 quarts of vegetables, and after my 36 pints Saturday, I have even more respect for that number.
As I have been thinking back to those days here lately, I have come to one very important understanding, and that is that I would gladly trade everything that I had for one more opportunity to go back down and work in that garden with my Dad or spend one more afternoon breaking beans with Mom, watching the Cubs get beat by the Cincinnati Reds and simply sharing together the most important things of life which have taken me 40 years to understand.
The activities that we are doing today will be the memories of tomorrow. How are you spending your day today? What memories are you creating? Are you doing what is really important? Have you even thought about what those really important things are? God gives us the opportunity to touch so many different lives, it is my prayer for you that today you create a wonderful memory that will last a lifetime.
Blessings
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Proverbs 22:6
I was telling my congregations yesterday how much I despised working in the garden when I was a kid. My Dad had a humongous garden that seemed to need some type of attention every single day, and the last thing I wanted to do was to get out in the hot sun and tend vegetables. Besides, I enjoyed vegetables almost as much as I enjoyed working in the garden, so if I didn’t eat them, why should I have to help grow them? At least that was the way a 10 year old mind worked.
I remember Dad coming into my room at the awful hour of 8 am announcing that it was time to get up, that we had work to do. When I finally staggered up and out, I could see that Dad had already been down to the garden and pulled up a wagon full of beans and piled them as tall as me under the shade tree in the front yard with Mom already hard at work picking them off the vines. One thing that Dad never liked doing was picking beans, so he would plant beans that would produce all about the same time so that he could pull up the entire plant rather than sit out in the field and pick the beans off. The rest of the morning was then spent with the whole family picking the beans and putting them in bushel baskets. Of course Dad was never content with just one pile that was as tall as me, no, as soon as he got us started working he would head back down to the garden and pull up some additional rows just for fun.
About lunch time, our task of picking the beans would be done and we could go back inside, (thank goodness for air conditioning) have lunch, flip the TV on to WGN and the Chicago Cubs game, spending the rest of afternoon breaking the beans that we had picked off. The next day Mom and my sister Verna would can the beans. I didn’t have much to do with that because I don’t think they wanted me hanging around the kitchen. I remember one year that Mom canned over 1000 quarts of vegetables, and after my 36 pints Saturday, I have even more respect for that number.
As I have been thinking back to those days here lately, I have come to one very important understanding, and that is that I would gladly trade everything that I had for one more opportunity to go back down and work in that garden with my Dad or spend one more afternoon breaking beans with Mom, watching the Cubs get beat by the Cincinnati Reds and simply sharing together the most important things of life which have taken me 40 years to understand.
The activities that we are doing today will be the memories of tomorrow. How are you spending your day today? What memories are you creating? Are you doing what is really important? Have you even thought about what those really important things are? God gives us the opportunity to touch so many different lives, it is my prayer for you that today you create a wonderful memory that will last a lifetime.
Blessings
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Proverbs 22:6
1 comment:
GREAT MEMORIES JIM!!!!!
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