Shade Tree Wisdom 9/16/11

          The harvest moon is still there, and this morning I was thinking of the Indians who called it that because it was harvest time. Among such harvest was wild rice, an Indian staple. They harvested the rice from canoes, gliding into the rice fields and holding the loaded rice heads over the canoe to thresh them. When the canoe was full, they simply paddled to shore and unloaded. It is late September or early October, the air is crisp and fresh, and slowly, methodically, the rice is harvested. Some is left for the birds, the rest cleaned and stored against the coming winter. And life as they knew it and understood the need went on.

          While I was working on this Shade Tree piece someone forwarded an email about the story of the life and death of Jesus, sculpted in metal and set for display on a field near Groom, Texas. Groom is on Highway I-40 some 70 miles east of Amarillo in the Texas panhandle.  Which stirred a memory of an old Gospel song
The Old Rugged Cross. A line or two run:
“On a hill far away, stood an old rugged cross,
The emblem of suffering and shame”.

          In a case before the US Supreme Court it was called “A Powerful Christian symbol”.  In the first century, St. Paul, writing to Corinth, said that Christ had sent him “to preach the Gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are saved it is the power of God.” 1 Cor. 1, 17-18.

          Like the slow harvest by Indian women through the years, so the Cross of Christ is and remains forever true, a symbol of just what had to be done to pay for the sins we daily commit, and for that we are thankful to God. The death on the cross happened by God’s design for the salvation of all who believe it happened for them,

GPD 9/16/11