Shade Tree Wisdom 5/21/11

Right now it’s raining in Dallas, and my informant says it is supposed to rain for the next several days. I pray it comes down this way too. We are dry in Texas.

Farmers in eastern China had been jumping into planting watermelons because of the sharp rise in its price. Often first time growers, and not familiar with chemicals, had been overusing some growth chemicals, that, with much rain, led to their watermelons bursting in the field. About 20 farmers were affected, loosing some 115 acres of melon. The report indicates how farmers are abusing certain growth chemicals which Chinese regulations do not forbid. Many farmers reported chopping up the fruit and feeding it to hogs and fish.

The report caught my eye because it illustrates just how so many treat religion. The Apostle John wrote his Gospel to show that “Jesus Christ is the Son of God” John 20,31. So John writes this:

“And the WORD became flesh and dwelt among us,
And we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-
Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
John bore witness of Him and cried out saying,
'This was He of whom I said, He who comes after me
Is preferred before me, because He was before Me.
And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace.
For the Law was given through Moses,
but grace and truth Came by Jesus Christ.
No one has seen God at any time.
The Only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father,
he has declared Him.” John 1, 14-18.

The law of Moses demanded daily sacrifice for sins. Hebrews describes this, those high priests daily needed “to offer up sacrifice, first for their own sins, and then for the people’s, for this He did once, when He offered up Himself. That is why John cries out, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world.” John 1,29.

It’s all done. We are saved by “grace are ye saved, and that not of yourselves, it is a GIFT of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.” Ephesians 2,8.

Those Chinese farmers forgot the bountiful hand of God in nature, and wanted to quicken harvest, make it bigger, and have larger profits. So they lost everything.

Which ends my thought. Many religions insist on “what must I DO?”, and so lose the salvation offered freely by the death and rising again of Jesus Christ. Believers hear the welcome words, “I remember their sin no more”. Join them, know Jesus is “the propitiation for our sins”.

GPD 5/21/11