The Pre-Fruit Work of Prayer

March 26, 2019
Beloved:
        The fruit comes late, wrote P.T. Forsyth, concerning prayer.  The fruit comes last, actually, as it has to do with blackberries actually.  I was checking my canes on the way to the henhouse yesterday.  Nothing happening yet.  Baby canes don’t get berries until their second year, so until these green I won’t know which ones will bear this year.  The one-year-olds I’ll just prune all summer, lest they take the garden like Shelob’s lair.

        Prayer is mostly pre-fruit work.  Waiting, rooting, growing, sun, rain, and patience.  Pruning, pollination, buds.  Flowers.  Green berries.  Red berries.  Birds!  Bird netting!  Then, maybe, purple berries that get soft.  For our yogurt, pie and jam.  Every year the work’s the same, and every year ripe berries are a maybe.  I’m still talking about prayer.  Just like with the berries, it’s the praying that matters most – the tending and the patience to do so little for so long, even on days when nothing much is happening yet.  This is the season of unseen movement; the growing is underground.

        Winter feels nearly over and Lent is halfway done.  Do not fail to pray for one another, and I wish you much love today.

~peace & prayers,
pastor annette