Hope: A Lesson from the Blueberry Patch

I love blueberries.  Amanda loves the health qualities and taste of blueberries.  So when she ran across blueberries discounted to closeout prices at Tractor Supply she could not pass them up.  She bought them for $.49 a piece when they are normally $5 or $6 dollars in the Spring.  She read about planting them in the fall and decided it was worth the risk.  So we planted about 12 various types of blueberries at our farm.  

Here is our field of blueberries!

While doing this we were thinking there is little chance these blueberries will make it.  

1. We don’t have that great of soil and we did nothing to enrich it (well we did let the pigs live there for a bit)!
2. We know nothing about growing blueberries!
3. We have lots of healthy grass and weeds that will probably overtake our blueberries if they do come up!
4. We were the only ones in Mayfield rushing to Tractor Supply to clean out the blueberries that hadn’t been bought since Spring.

When we went to plant them, they looked very small, like a twig or small branch with a small root system.  But we persevered!

Here is Amanda planting away!  Doesn’t she look good in overalls and a hat?

We had the kids get rocks to sit beside the small shafts so we could at least find them next Spring.

Don’t worry, you couldn’t see it if you were there either!!

As we laughed about how we were probably wasting our time and there was little hope of these blueberries actually living and producing fruit, it reminded me of a Scripture from Job.  Job is lamenting his suffering and discussing his lack of hope in death.  He says this poignant words:

““For there is hope for a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease. Though its root grow old in the earth, and its stump die in the soil, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put out branches like a young plant. But a man dies and is laid low; man breathes his last, and where is he? As waters fail from a lake and a river wastes away and dries up, so a man lies down and rises not again; till the heavens are no more he will not awake or be roused out of his sleep.”  (Job 14:7–12)

Job could have been talking about our blueberries!  There is little hope, but there is hope, that when the sun and water of spring come, these blueberry shoots will spring into life!  Yet, Job was saying, he didn’t even have that hope.  It saddens my heart to think of how many millions live without the hope of the resurrection.  I read a verse from Proverbs that typifies many in our materialistic society today, “When the wicked dies, his hope will perish, and the expectation of wealth perishes too.“¹  Many live their lives placing hope in wealth and pleasure, but what hope do they have for when their body is placed in the ground?

We don’t have much hope for our blueberries, but I have a great hope because of the work of Jesus Christ that my body will come forth one day to a new life immortal in nature.²  Truly that is what matters!!

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¹  Proverbs 11:7

²  1 Corinthians 15 as well as many other passages teach the power of Jesus’ resurrection.