Harvest Approaches...

AS I was looking at the little bit of our garden that grew this year I realized that the potatoes are soon to be ready to dig. MOnths ago I wrote in our church newsletter abotu planting and faith and Pentecost. Some seeds are ready to harves, some will take longer. Sometimes I wish that the seeds of faith were labeled like egetables, giving you an idea how long they will take to reach maturity...

It is planting time! Well not quite but almost. That time when we put seeds into the ground in the hope that they will become flowers and vegetables to grace and beautify our tables.

In the life of the church it is a time to celebrate change as well. Fifty days after Easter we celebrate Pentecost. In the Book of Acts Luke tells us that it is at Pentecost when the early church first experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit. This experience changed them. Up to that point they had been staying quiet, staying together, still living in fear that they would follow Jesus to the cross. But on the day of Pentecost they began to proclaim the Good News far and wide. They were transformed and the world has not been the same since.

Being changed and transformed is hard to accept sometimes. It can be a scary thing to face. For Peter and his friends, Pentecost meant putting their old life behind them. That life was over and a new life had begun. Real transformation means that something needs to die so a new thing can take its place. And we tend to like that status quo. But think back to those seeds we will soon be putting into the ground.

Jesus said that unless a seed dies it will never grow. A seed rarely looks like the final product. And even those ones that do (potatoes and peas for example) are destroyed in the process of growing new produce. And which of us would say that this is a bad thing? Out of the destruction of the old comes food for our table. So it is with the life of faith. Faith is a process (sometimes fast and sometimes slow) of being transformed. Life with God is a process of being changed. That is why Pentecost remains my favourite festival of the church year. It reminds me that the Spirit is working to help me be transformed.

What signs of transformation do you see in your life?