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Heaped Up and Overflowing

by Rev. Dr. Amy Chilton on 10/13/22

Apples

Confession: I have a really hard time saying “no” to produce. When I lived in California a neighbor and I would “rescue” citrus fruit from public spaces (totally legal, don’t worry). We called it “fruit rescuing.” Did we need 700 oranges? Not all for ourselves, no. Did we need a tree full of olives? Also, no. Did we need a crate full of avocados? Unfortunately, no. A farm stand is more temptation than I can endure - especially if they sell in bulk! A discounted 30lb box of tomatoes? Of course! I can make salsa. The small bag of apples at the pick-your-own? NO WAY - I’ll fill the large bag until it is overflowing, with apples rolling off its top and around my trunk. There is ALWAYS room for just one more apple! Don’t even get me started on how impossible it is to STOP blueberry picking once I’ve begun…

Trees and plants overflowing with edible abundance are a “thin place” for me - I see them and want to start singing as loudly as I can in praise for the Creator of such a gorgeous and fertile earth. The fact that we can put tiny seeds into the ground and grow heaps of food never ceases to amaze me. At harvest time it is so very easy to believe that when God saw all that God had made that God declared it VERY good (Gen. 1:31).

When the Israelites were wandering the desert after they had escaped slavery in Egypt, they clung to a promise that God was taking them to a “land flowing with milk and honey” (Joshua 5:6). Their journeys had taken them through moments of deprivation when they couldn’t stop thinking about the foods they had left behind and moments of abundance when God sent manna and birds to them from the sky. Part of their journey had been to learn to trust in God’s abundance when they feared deprivation.

In the Gospels we have Jesus moving from table to table, field to field, connecting with folks around overflowing tables and heavily laden wheat stalks. In Luke 6:38 we have this idea of abundance used to describe how God gives us forgiveness in “a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over [that] will be put into [our] lap.” God is not stingy with grace and forgiveness - although God’s people often are. God’s grace, like this earth God created, is alive, fertile, and overflowing and we are called to stand in awe of this abundance, to take joy in it, to savor it - and to share it with others. There is always abundance with God, which is much more than “enough.”