A vine at a time

Last week, I “retired” our tomato plants. About the middle of October, I realize that few of those tight green marbles will ripen as we inch toward the first frost. We have only five tomato plants, but they may as well be fifteen. Clipping a branch at a time, I save out the tomatoes with a yellow blush of potential. These I wash and put in a covered box with a red apple, whose off-gassing helps them ripen. Finally, I yank out the main stems that seem to be super-glued into the soil. Goodbye, a couple hours. It’s the down side to having fresh tomatoes the last part of the summer. It’s not my favorite chore, but I get through it.

In the midst of this chore, I thought of tough things in life that loom much more tangled and messy than my autumn tomato patch. One story I’ve often shared with people needing encouragement comes from the life of Dr. A.B. Simpson (1843-1919), a Canadian preacher, theologian, author, and founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Think back a hundred-plus years, before cars, air travel, phones or the internet. Dr. Simpson was preaching in Ireland when he posed the question, “What is it to abide in Jesus?” Then he gave this answer: “It is to keep on saying, minute by minute, ‘For this I have Jesus.’”

That phrase of trust lodged in the heart of the event’s pianist, a young woman whose family lived across the Irish Sea. During the service she received a telegram asking her to come home immediately because her mother was dying. “I have never traveled alone,” she told him. “But for this I have Jesus. I must make a long journey to the south of England. For this and all else that goes with it, I have Jesus.” As it turned out, in those days of slow travel, she arrived home ten minutes after her mother died. Her family was so distraught that responsibility for the funeral service and legal details fell to her. She later told how she kept claiming, “For this I have Jesus,” as she had to do things she couldn’t have done in her own strength.

The message from Simpson’s sermon is echoed in Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (KJV). Or, as the Greek-to-English translation is clarified in the Amplified Bible: “I have strength for all things in Christ Who empowers me—I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him Who enfuses inner strength into me, [that is, I am self-sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency]." My copy of the Amplified version was once my late mother’s, given her in 1962 by a godly aunt. Fifty years later, as I read the same words that my mother had underlined in red, I sense how she embraced this truth for her own overwhelming life challenges. They ranged from being the firstborn of nine in a family that knew profound poverty, to her life-long battle with asthma, to her final, hard-fought battle with cancer.

“For this”—for the intimidating, scary, impossible things of life—“I have Jesus.” The best part is that besides coming alongside in our challenges, He sees the eventual spiritual outcome. Leaning on Him, stretching with Him, and depending on Him are all part of growing in the faith. “For this,” there is a purpose.

I just checked the tomatoes in my “ripening box,” and a few are turning red. There’s another parable here, about God at work in the dark places, but I think Simpson’s hopeful counsel suffices for today.