I am on the cusp of VBS, and my thoughts have turned to food. Well, it is only natural since this year's Vacation Bible School is about planting, gardening, seeds, and harvesting.
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| The Gravely Tractor and Wagon |
Have you heard of the “new” food approach called Farm to Table? That is where the consumer/cook is mindful that the food on our plate is a product of the food grown on the farm. When I was growing up, that was called, “Granddaddy’s Garden.” My grandfather was an accountant, but in middle Tennessee that didn’t mean he couldn’t “hoe a row” in the backyard. My grandfather’s garden was kind of “farm sized.” It was a good acre or so and fed his household, his daughters’, and quite a few neighbors’ as well. The string beans wound their way up the corn stalks, and there were some spots on those apples which would still burst with flavor. Add into this mix that my grandfather had advanced glaucoma and could not see well enough to read or to drive. However, he knew what the seeds were that he had planted; he knew where to find them; he knew when to harvest them.
I think VBS is very much like “Farm to Table” Faith. Faith is planted by fun songs, silly skits, creative arts, life size Bible Stories, outside games, story snacks, and a host of volunteers who have prayed and stayed on the VBS team all year long. The garden is a
room transported from Sunday morning coffee, lemonade, and donuts into a sacred moment of Good News for 400 people of all ages in Tshirts, shorts, and jeans. It is amazing that the “decently and in order” are overtaken by rampantly joyful tendrils that spill out to classrooms, meeting rooms, balconies, and yards. I think the church building is hallowed by the echoes of VBS voices sown into the walls, and our polity is all the better for it.
VBS, and other playful programs, take the truth of God working in and around and through our lives and sow it into the hearts and minds of the children who attend. Many of these sowers are VBS alumni who have played, prayed, sung, and crafted their way through VBS when they were young. Someone sowed those seeds of promise, hope, faith, love and care into their lives. What makes those seeds grow? It is the life lived in communion as the people of God. That is a life lived beyond ourselves and in the name of the one who created us. Seeds grown by grace create gardens full of strangers, shepherds, tax collectors, wise folk, widows, prophets and children. This earthly farm brings us to an eternal table.
Food and feeding verses are found all through the Bible. The verse may be as small as a mustard seed, or as vast as a warehouse for a seven year surplus of grain; all of which is to say that these good things are given by God. The harvest lasts a lifetime; but we will all “bear fruit in due season.” However, that first moment when the sprouts burst forth out of the ground…well that can be a little loud, a little messy, a little bit VBSy.
Come, for the table is prepared! (Follow us at https://www.facebook.com/2PCChildren/ )
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