Becoming Stalwart and Productive

“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night.       He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also does not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper.” –Psalm 1:1-3 (NKJV).

When I was a child I had the good fortune to grow up on a farm.  We worked very hard, and life was not easy.  But we had—maybe not always what we wanted—but certainly what we needed.  Even during the years of the Great Depression, people came to my father’s farm for work and for food, and he would share of our bounty with them, paying in corn which they ground into meal or potatoes and other vegetables to help feed less-fortunate families than ours.  I remember, too the apple orchard we had on a section of our farm.  If frost did not get the early-blooming apples, we could usually count on a good harvest from the orchard.  A stream ran through the orchard that provided needed moisture.  Daddy would remind us of the Lord’s provision of water and food, and lead us to relate these bounties from the natural world to persons who grew in wisdom and knowledge of the Lord and His Word.  “Be like a strong tree,” he would urge us.  “Practice what your learn from the Bible and in Sunday School, and always ask the Lord to guide you.  Then your life will produce good fruit, like these strong apple trees.”  At a young age I began to have a desire to be like the apple trees in our orchard, producing fruit in due season.  I thank God for positive lessons and examples that began early in my life to help me set goals and work toward them.  I pray that parents and grandparents today read and remember this promise from God’s Word:  “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”-Proverbs 22:6.