Have you ever tried planting a garden on a hill?

Almost every time that I’ve planted a garden on my property it’s been a nice level spot. This time around, I decided to try it on a hill, and I’m having all sorts of issues.

The ground in this particular spot is a nasty form of clay that just clumps. We had a rainstorm that came by, and washed the fertilizer I had planted on top away. We build a box around it, now the water inside is pooling and still moving things around.

Same thing happens with life, and it can be enough to make you want to give up!

Anything worth doing is worth the work… sometimes there’s more work than you expect, but that is just the time of testing that you have to work through. James tells us that the trying of our faith works patience in our lives. I think you could also say that things like this work endurance, self discipline and other fruits of the spirit.

Sometimes it is better to work at it and get it right, other times you should work on the next thing. The important thing is to know the difference!

So there we were again yesterday, sitting on our couches, Penny and our little fruit, watching as our church’s team tried once again to put forth a live sermon on YouTube and get all fancy while everyone at home wondered whether to stand to sing or to stay seated. It has been surreal to be part of a church in the time of COVID-19.

At one point during the message, the pastor stated that some have worried that if they went online with sermons that people may not return when we’re allowed to leave their houses again, and he thought this was quite funny, but I can understand this concern.

During this time I’ve read of churches concerned because they view attending church as part of what they must do to gain God’s favor. I’ve heard of others not having services to make sure that people come back. Many are figuring out live streaming for the first time and connecting in other ways:

• Business meetings by cars showing up in the parking lot and voting
• Remote Communion?
• Calls instead of in person visitation

How does this impact the body of Christ? This isn’t the first time that Christians had to gather by families and, in fact, the Bible talks about families as being the place where Christian living and learning is to thrive! Husbands are to teach their wives things they don’t understand (1 Corinthians 14:35) and Fathers were to teach their children about God all during the day (Deuteronomy 6:7). Christianity was supposed to be the way we lived, not what we did on a Sunday morning.

What I’ve learned about churches during this pandemic is that many of them believe that they are Christianity, and that they are indispensable. And I can believe it is quite the mental issue for many Pastors that they are now preaching to practically empty churches where they were used to preaching to many more, because even if they know that it’s not the number of people there, it’s still human to like the validation of people coming week after week to hear you preach the Word.

Let’s keep grounded in God’s Word and realize the church’s rightful place. Let’s redouble our efforts at family and private devotions and work to make our homes places where we learn and grow. Let’s fellowship with our churches, but realize that we live out our Christianity daily.

What are you doing with your family during your stay at home while the world figures out the coronavirus? You could stay home, binge watch some VeggieTales– one of my older veggies said that Tomato Sawyer and Huckleberry Larry is the one that he’s seen the fewest times.

For me, I took the older veggies out to the local home improvement store back when we could get out of house and got supplies to build our own gaga ball pit.

What’s that? You’re not familiar with Gaga Ball? You’ve never played it?

The best way to explain it is to envision dodge ball in a hexagon or an octagon, and instead of being able to hit people anywhere but the head, you have to hit their legs– if it just hits their hands or any part of their upper body it doesn’t count. Oh, and if it goes outside the walls, you’re out.

I haven’t seen anyone try to apply the other dodgeball type rules to it, but unless you have the setup or have a park that does, you’re out of luck. So we build our own! Here’s the instructions we used.

So let me know in the comments below– have you ever played gaga ball?

One of my younger fruits is getting a larger vocabulary and any of you out there whose little one has started to talk more knows that it’s a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that it is so cute when they start expressing themselves, and it’s a whole lot easier to tell what they’re complaining about or when they have to use the bathroom!

The downside is that because of the fall, these little ones often say things that hurt others or are mean– as the Good Book says, out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks!

So, when my smallest little grape starts calling those around him meanies or telling them that he only likes some of them and not others, it comes the time that this old Plum and his Peach of a wife must step in and show him love and get him to show love to others.

Now, this isn’t always easy, but it starts with controlling what we say and the way that we talk about others. Yes, young ones tend to parrot those around them and act like them. It’s time for introspection and lessons on love for everyone. That’s why Christ came– to show His love to us so that we might show His love for others.

So be careful what you say, because you might hear it again, and then you have to work hard to that you don’t!

I don’t know if you’re like me, but taxes is usually a multi-day affair. And that’s after all the paperwork has arrived. This year I got notified that one of my documents wasn’t going to arrive until February! I’m not sure how you can do that, because I thought it was all due in January.

Anyway, taxes are a part of life, something that comes every year and soaks up a lot of our time because there are entire businesses dedicating to making them easier. Call me a cynic, but I’m sure there’s a lobbyist somewhere that’s hoping to make something more complex instead of less just so that they can get more money for their software.

I mean, the government can make it easier, but why?

It’s funny, because taxes were around in Jesus’ day too. There’s that famous episode where they tested Jesus by asking him whether money should go to Caesar or to God and Jesus answered that we should give unto Caesar the things that are Caesars (the money with his mug on it), and give unto God the thing that is God’s.

But my favorite story story in the Bible about taxes is this one:

When they came to Capernaum, the people who collected the half-shekel temple tax came to Peter and said, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax?”

“Yes,” he said.

But when they came into the house, Jesus spoke to Peter first. “What do you think, Simon? From whom do earthly kings collect taxes, from their children or from strangers?”

“From strangers,” he said.

Jesus said to him, “Then the children don’t have to pay. But just so we don’t offend them, go to the lake, throw out a fishing line and hook, and take the first fish you catch. When you open its mouth, you will find a shekel coin. Take it and pay the tax for both of us.”

Matthew 17:24-27

I mean, Peter was trying not to make Jesus look bad by telling the Pharisees that of course Jesus pays his taxes. I mean, do they think that Jesus is a tax cheat or something?! But Jesus tells them that earthly kings take taxes from strangers not from his own children, and therefore Jesus doesn’t owe his Father taxes.

Kinda reminds me of the fact that the US government used to run only on tariffs and not an income tax, but I digress.

The point is that we all must pay what is owed us, and that means that we are taxed for our money and our time. Oh, and don’t go looking around for money in a fish’s mouth unless Jesus tells you to.

Come to think of it, I’d like to play Peter when they make this into a VeggieTales episode, but I’ll probably end up in the part of the fish… or someone standing in the background… Bob, you still have my number, right?