Half-Runner Beans

When my mother moved down south into Dominion Senior Living in Hixson, Tennessee, we left her house as it was for some time.  But to access needed funds, the three of us children decided to sell the old home place.  My brother in Maryland inventoried the household items and we all got whatever we wanted as mementos and keepsakes.  I received and old shoeshine box that I had made in Mr. Swearingen’s shop class in 1961.  I just got around to looking into the shoe-shine box this summer and found that my brother had filled it with small items from mom’s house.  One item was a sealed mason jar with half-runner bean seeds that my Granny Whitely saved from one gardening season to the next.  I planted one of those seeds and, to my surprise, it sprouted!  Granny had put a date on the jar of 1989!  Hey, the reason that the half-runner seed had sprouted was that it had life in it.  Paul put it this way in Ephesians 2:1, “And you hath he quickened (made alive), who were dead in trespasses and sins.”  Just as moisture, sunlight, and warmth made that half-runner seed to sprout, the blessed Holy Spirit has made us alive in Jesus Christ!  Our salvation is bought and paid for by the sacrificial death of Jesus Chirst!

 

I’m so glad I’m a part of the family of God,

I’ve been washed in the Spirit, cleansed by His blood;

Joint-heirs with Jesus as we travel this sod,

For I’m part of the family, the family of God.