People have been talking about blueberries this year and two things stand out. The harvest came earlier than we expected. And the abundance of the berries has just been wonderful! And for all of our visitors from out of town during the Fisherman’s Picnic, the good news is that there are still some left. Wouldn’t you just love to take a taste of Cook County home? If you need directions to a good blueberry patch, let me help. Just go up the ‘trail.’ Which trail, you might ask. I’ll say again, just go up the trail—Sawbill, Gunflint, Arrowhead, just about any trail. The berries are abundant this year.
I love blueberries! And I know you do too. But I have discovered over time that I might be just a little different from most blueberry pickers. Maybe not, but most often people will describe a good day picking berries in the woods by exclaiming how delicious the berries were and how they enjoyed munching as they picked. I know that some years ago when I went picking with my sons in their pre-teen years they took on that pattern so well that most often their pails were a little light but their tongues and lips were more than a little blue. But they didn’t pick up that pattern from their father.
Oh no, I am a serious picker. Give me a pail and I will put my head down and pick for a couple hours and never taste a single berry.
Is there anyone out there like me? My family would say, “Ah, Dad, you’ve got to enjoy the picking.”
And I’d respond in a serious fatherly way about enjoying the anticipation of blueberries on ice cream or in the pie, all of which would be later. And you can imagine how any discussion of delayed gratification went over with little boys who were standing in the middle of God’s candy store. They just went back to eating blueberries.
Something changed for me this year. We went picking blueberries recently. We were warned by some avid berry pickers that everyone else had been harvesting since early July, so we might not find many left. And I could tell by the well worn paths that many people had already been to one of our favorite spots. Undaunted and being a serious picker I set to “work”—but only for a short while. In short order I picked my way into a plentiful patch by a bald granite hilltop. I stood up for a moment and saw as far as the eye could see the evidence of the Ham Lake Fire all around me, and the terrain all the way to the horizon looked just perfect for berries of all kinds. I was in the middle of a sea of blue, splashed with occasional highlights of red raspberries. As late as it was in the season there was abundance of berries beyond the ability of all of the blueberry pickers in Cook County to deplete. It was simply overwhelming.
And that was the moment of the change. I sat down on a convenient granite boulder and ate. I certainly wasn’t “working” very hard, and my pail wasn’t filling at the usual speed. Nevertheless, I sat down and ate. Being a pastor I thought there must be a passage from the Bible relevant to the experience. What was that one again? … “He maketh me to sit down in blue pastures… He restoreth my soul.”
That is my clumsy paraphrase, of course.
But the fact was that for me, being in the midst of that wonderful harvest was soul restoring. I am sure you have been there too. To be there was to witness and remember the providence of God, the wonders of God’s creation, the powers of regeneration, and the possibility of renewal.
Not only did I see the abundance of the berries, I also saw the strong re-growth of the jack pines. I saw the charred remains of the trees, which had blackened my pants and shirt sleeves in the past couple years, now rotting, crumbling and supporting abundant wintergreen and other new vegetation.
In many churches this Sunday and for the remaining Sundays in August our appointed gospel reading is from St. John, chapter six. One of the key words in that chapter is “abundant.”
We will hear the story of the feeding of the five thousand and then spend a month reflecting on God’s message for us in the abundance of that story. Personally, I found that my experience of abundant berries on that granite hilltop helped me understand the biblical message better, while at the same time the biblical story helped me understand all the wonders I witnessed that day. In God there is abundance and renewal. In God your soul will be restored. May you all be blessed by the abundance of God.
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month our contributor is Reverend Mark Ditmanson of Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Grand Marais.
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