Why not make guess? What is the most harvested fruit in the world? Watermelons; Tomatoes; Banannas; Apples
Hey do you know; What the cow said when her kid closed the barn door? Open the door, (pause) Were you raised in a house? Ho ho
Monday 8/7
Eccl. 2:25 "For who can eat or enjoy anything apart from him? God gives wisdom, knowledge, and joy to those who please him. But if a sinner becomes wealthy, God takes the wealth away and gives it to those who please him..."
This inference here is that joy, knowledge and wisdom are all a gift from our Heavenly Father. To take it even further, without our Father's involvement in our lives, we aren't even able to enjoy the most basic pleasures. Such as food, appetite, digestion, sight, hearing, smell, memory, health, sanity, and really anything else that offers us normal pleasurable experiences.
It was said that John D. Rockefeller in his life brought in an income of about $1 million dollars a week. Yet due to his ill health his team of doctors guided him to spare most foods, and to eat the equivalent of food that a pauper would have despised.
Though he was the richest man in the world, and even though he weighed less than a hundred pounds, due to his ill health, he was confined to barely sample food. His breakfast consisted of a drop of coffee, a spoonful of cereal, a forkful of egg, a piece of meat fitting on a spoon with room left over.
Here he was wealthy, powerful, and yet he was unable to eat what we would consider a snack at any one time. His ability to live pain free was determined by his limited intake of food.
What does this teach us? Well, simply Solomons beginning thoughts in our verse today. "Who can eat or enjoy anything apart from Him?" He was captive to food, but only in small incremental amounts throughout the day, consisting of continuous feeding, but in almost totally controlled crumbs of food. His pain & discomfort set the controls on the level of food that he could take in on an hourly basis.
Imagine living with these sorts of constraints, to literally be the slave of the level of your food intake. I am unable to imagine the discipline that this way of living required.
In my mothers last year of her life she was also held captive of her body. She couldn't walk on her own, nor even drink water without thickening it, or she would choke, not able to talk, only slowly painstakingly spell out her words on a letter board. Though she was confined in this way, her greatest joy was to listen to the words of scripture that we read to her, and to joy in the songs of praise to Her loving Father.
I can remember my last visit on this earth with her, laying beside her, and humming the songs that she hummed to me as a child, "Hush little baby", she early in my life transposed from Papa to Moma, being the one who sought to provide for me her baby. The song ends with these words. "And if that horse and cart fall down, You'll be the sweetest little baby in town.
This is how our loving Savior looks at us, we're His sweetest baby.
As I laid by my mother she could hardly weep, but, much later in my life, during my bout with Covid, when I could barely breath, she came to me and sang that tune to me, to bring comfort to my soul. This time she transposed the words to say Papa as my heavenly Father, who still said "that I was the sweetest little baby in town."
So Go With God my dear one, for to Him, "you are the sweetest little baby in town." Oh my dear one, rest in Him for He loves you as only a loving father could. He yearns to give to you His love, comfort, and care. He is right their this very instant reaching out to you to hold you in His loving arms, with that warmth and softness of that moment with His blanket holding you in His arms. Just as your mother poured her words of comfort, into your being, He in the same way pours out His love for you.
Matt. 11:28 "...Come to me, all of you (my sweet babies) who are weary and heavy laden. and I will give to you rest (comfort, warmth, peace, etc.) His arms are open wide fall into His arms for rest my dear one. For He is only a prayer away.
Bananas