Those Beans

 “Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’ In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Luke 15:8-10 (New International Version)

When I was a kid, summers were for running wild, spending our days (and some of our nights) outdoors, climbing trees, traipsing through the woods, and sometimes through the swamp. It meant freedom. At least until the beans in my parents’ garden took over our lives. 

Then, from the end of July, until school started, it was a couple hours every day, bent over in the garden picking buckets’ full, then cutting each one into three or four bite-size pieces so Mom could blanch them and freeze them. I have a lot of happy childhood memories, and one of them is sitting in the kitchen in the evening, nearly in the dark because it was hot out and if we kept the lights off, supposedly it kept it cooler in the house. The Milwaukee Brewers would be on the radio, and as we listened to the game, we’d be cutting up all those stinkin’ green beans.

Flash-forward nearly a half-century and here I am, picking, cutting, blanching, freezing my own beans – more wax than green as I like them better. And it’s not as hot in my house; I’m too cheap to get air conditioning, but I do have more than one fan. 

Yesterday, while out in the garden, tossing those beans into an ice cream pail, I missed and one of those beans fell to the ground. One, just one, tender five-inch-long, green bean. But I had to stop what I was doing to pick it up and put it in the pail so I didn’t forget about it and lose it.

As silly a thing as it was, it still reminded me of the verse above. If I get this excited about one little bean, imagine how excited God gets over one little human soul?

Thank You, LORD, God, for loving each and every one of us, for caring about our futures, for gently placing us in Your bucket when we stray. Amen.