The end of winter is the time when many gardeners turn to their books. We may have been perusing seed catalogs for the last few months, and even ordered a few new varieties of tomatoes or beans to try.
When the robins appear and the ground starts thawing, we turn our attention to the gardening books. We search for the best way to plant that new Santa Rosa Plum that came in the mail; bare rooted, bare twigged, and sad looking.
Do we soak it first? How far away from the wild plum should it be planted for best air flow and pollination?
What about those okra you are going to grow again after a five-year hiatus? Should you start them indoors on a heat mat, or direct-sow them in the garden? How about winter sowing? Whoa! Nothing in the books about that. You’d be better off looking for that method on the web. And so the research continues and branches off into instructional videos.
Okay, now that we’ve gotten on the computer, let’s talk about that other book … the book of faces. If you open that book instead of doing your garden research, you might not get around to planting the new tomatoes, let alone the okra.
Yes, social media can be a big time-waster. It can, of course, be a huge blessing; especially to those who live far away from old friends or family. We can use it for good or let it swallow up our lives with silly stuff. But I digress … just as if I had opened Facebook and gotten distracted … See what I mean?
As our produce begins ripening, we start looking at the cookbooks. Oh, yeah! For that okra, I’ll be opening my own personal notebook and drooling over the pickled okra recipe from my sweet daughter-in-law, Lorelei.
Gardening is important to me. My plants are sometimes called “my babies” as I carefully tend them. This is why I have a trusted collection of gardening books, and online sites where I can learn or re-learn methods that will ensure a measure of success in growing things.
What can be more important than the care and nurture of an immortal soul? We shouldn’t be afraid of opening the “book!” As a young child raised by unbelievers, when I was told that God had such a book, I was more than a little intrigued! The logical part of my mind told me that if there really was a God, and he had a book, it should certainly be read and studied.
When I finally got my hands on a Bible, I started reading it eagerly. I must admit I was perplexed by all the “begats” in the first chapter of Matthew, never having heard that word before!
But there are yet more books.
“And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books” (Revelation 20:12, NKJV).
This phrase sends a shiver down the spine of even the most devout Christian. Who would want all their deeds recorded and then read later?
Thankfully, for the born-again Christian, we have an advocate with us for that day (1 John 2). Are our names recorded in the Book of Life? Are your robes washed white in the blood of the Lamb (Revelation 7:14)?
Get ready for the books!