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Kept and Keeping

~ Rest in Grace, Labor in Love

Kept and Keeping

Tag Archives: He Remains Faithful

The Grace of Grape Tomatoes

29 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by Lauren Scott in Home and Family, Living Faith

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Tags

clumsy me, devotional, grape tomatoes as a means of grace, grocery shopping, He Remains Faithful, Jesus, love, meditations, motherhood, weaknesses revealed

I was on my period. I hadn’t had enough to eat. It was about 11am, and I was at the grocery store with two little boys. We grabbed some bananas and carrots, and then I saw them: organic grape tomatoes. With the exception of one picky eater, my family enjoys snacking on these little red gems. So I picked up a package to examine it. Some of the tomatoes looked a bit wilted, so I placed it back on the temperature-controlled shelf and began to reach for another box.

And that’s when it happened. The box didn’t exactly like the way I had set it down, apparently, so in protest it decided to slowly lean forward until it fell to the ground, bouncing from cauliflower to lettuce to floor, where the box finally burst open, allowing over half of the precious fruit to scatter on the icky grocery store tile. Since there was no store clerk around to tell me, “Oh, it’s ok, I’ll take care of that,” I bent over and picked up every last tomato, closed up the box, and put it dutifully in my cart, with the words, “You break it you buy it,” spinning around in my head.

I thought at this point God was trying to teach me something: despite my being a bit of a grump about the whole thing, at least I did the right thing by picking them up and paying for the potentially damaged goods. But God wasn’t done with me yet, nor was He done with the grape tomatoes.

We meandered through the store, grabbing the things on my list (or was this the day that I went in for nothing more than peanut butter and made a list in my head as I shopped and ended up with half a basket full of groceries?), until we finally made it to the checkout line and then headed home.

My blood sugar levels were dropping by now and my muscles felt a bit weak. But we had to unload and put away the groceries before sitting down to eat lunch, so I got to it. I rearranged a few things in the fridge, managing to make room for the abundance of groceries I hadn’t planned on bringing home today (but when you’re out on Monday you might as well make the most of it and try to get what you need for the week so that by the time Thursday rolls around you can be at home doing something productive instead of having to go out to the store again, right?).

Then there they were, the last item to put away, those floor-germ-infested tomatoes. I figured I’d give them a preliminary rinsing off before putting them in the fridge using just water, until I thought better of it and pulled the vegetable cleaning spray out from under the sink. Spray, spray, spray. Toss, toss, toss. Rinse, rinse, rinse. That wasn’t so bad. Maybe I’ll just do this again before serving them so I feel confident that they’re clean.

And then it happened again. As I was turning toward the fridge, my limbs defied me and, after bumping into the refrigerator door, I dropped the box of tomatoes onto the floor…the kitchen floor that didn’t get cleaned last Friday like it was supposed to. And, sure enough, the box opened on impact and all those clean tomatoes went rolling on the floor, under the lip of the fridge, the oven, and the dishwasher.

I started to get angry. One of those less-than-justified “Why, God?!?” moments. But then I felt the tension in my clenched fists subside as I realized this was from His hand—not a curse, but an opportunity. An opportunity to see that I don’t have it all together. Not only am I not as physically in control as I’d like to be (hello, dropping the same box of tomatoes on the floor TWICE in the span of about 90 minutes), but neither do I really have things together emotionally or spiritually. I was ready to raise my fist at heaven, figuratively speaking, to whine and complain and throw a grown-up tantrum…over some tomatoes. Forget that I “did the right thing” in purchasing them at the store. I grumbled against the God of heaven. These tomatoes were simply a small chisel in the hand of a master craftsman, working to chip away at the hardened, bitter stone of my heart, in fact rebuking my self-righteousness by revealing to me that there was work to be done there at all.

On many occasions this kind of scrutiny, though private, would cause me to despair because I wasn’t living up to the perfect standard that I so desperately desire to meet. But in this instance, those tomatoes became a means of grace for me. As I washed them off again, with tears beginning to form in my eyes, I realized that Jesus came to save sinners. He came to die for sinners, to make them clean. And I am one. There is hope for me. There is grace for me, a sinner.

Like those tomatoes that needed washed yet again, so did I. What a joy that His gift of forgiveness, love, and cleansing is not given begrudgingly, as I grumbled at first to clean the tomatoes, but freely. In the very moment that I knew my sin and unworthiness, I also knew that “It is finished,” and I am redeemed, restored, and loved.

There are a lot more elaborate ways the Lord could choose to show me my sin and His love. But this simple little demonstration was sufficient to show that my attitude in such a small thing revealed big things about my heart. But “where sin abounded grace abounded all the more.” His mercy and grace are infinitely bigger than my sin. And so I thank God for the grace I found in an ornery package of grape tomatoes.

He Remains Faithful

11 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by Lauren Scott in Living Faith

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Tags

devotional, faithfulness, Great is Thy Faithfulness, He Remains Faithful, Jesus, meditations, seasons

So often I’m confronted by my own lack of faithfulness.  To keep up with housecleaning, to keep up correspondence with precious old friends and family, to proactively train my children, to to keep up with finances, to write in my journal, to meditate on God’s word, to stick to a meal plan (or follow through with any plan, for that matter), to keep the things of the Lord at the front of my mind, to keep looking to Jesus as the greatest treasure of my life when I am faced with lesser things that vie for my attention.  And I have a tendency to become consumed with my failures, endlessly looking within until all I can see is my own inadequacies.  It’s a good recipe for discouragement.

IMG_4265Such was my state of mind the other morning as I sat out on our front porch, soaking in the early morning sunlight and breathing the crisp, cool air, trying to wake up enough to read my Bible before the boys awoke and demanded my attention.  Since we’d recently had some good rain, I could hear a quiet rush of water in our creek, the sound gentle but constant.  The birds, squirrels, and even a deer had all put on a small show for me.  Getting to see some of God’s curious creatures always seems a special gift to me that makes me smile.  Some relaxation and a smile was nice, but still I was carrying the weight of my own failures, my own lack of faithfulness.

I began to study the trees, now rich with colors of orange, red, green, and brown.  I love fall.  Every year.  Every … year … It struck me how faithful and constant the seasons are.  And how mankind has for all of his history depended upon them for survival, for sustenance.  All of the constants by which we measure time and number our days, the sun, moon, and stars, the day and night and seasons, these things are constant because they are made and upheld by the ultimate constant:  God.

Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so.   Genesis 1:14-15

He did good and gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.  Acts 14:17 

He [Christ] is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.  Hebrews 1:3

So many truths of Scripture poured into my head as I gazed upon the beautiful view of fall foliage on our own little slice of creation.  But most of all, I was struck by God’s constancy, His faithfulness, His utter dependability–especially now in contrast to my own lack of the same.  The God who created the heavens and the earth, who keeps this world spinning, who keeps the seasons coming, on whom we all depend whether we realize it or not–this unchangeable, trustworthy God has sent His Son to die in my place, wiping clean my record and crediting His faithfulness to my account.  He has called me His child, promised to never leave me nor forsake me, and has promised to return for me some day, righting all the wrongs and establishing His righteous kingdom forever.  Why do I despair over my own instability when I have such a Rock to lean on?

So often, blinded by my own self-reliance or self-loathing, I fail to hear creation screaming to me of God’s faithfulness (see Psalm 19).  The beautiful, constant, humbling reminder that all of creation–and even all of my salvation–depends first and foremost (and ultimately) upon God’s faithfulness and not my own.  Praise God.

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father;
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;
As Thou hast been, Thou forever will be.
 
Summer and winter and springtime and harvest,
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.
 
Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide;
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,
Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!
 
Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided;
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!
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Lauren Scott

Lauren Scott

Christian. Wife. Mother. Homemaker. Home Educator. Blogger. Book Addict. Outdoorist.

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