Now that it is planting and growing season it is also time to start getting ready for canning season. Getting all the jars ready, the lids, the rings, the spices, the special salt. It is fun watching a cabinet of clean, empty downturned jars, one by one turned upright and filled with all those colors of fruit and vegetables. So many shades of red and brown and green, with some yellow and orange scattered around.
Officially those jars only keep for a year. But sometimes you find an ancient one, that’s been passed down and forgotten over and over, for years and years, which no one wants to open. Maybe with a ribbon from the county fair. A curious treasure. Fruit that lasts.
Everything eventually wears out and runs down. The best canned pickles only last so long, vinegar and salt and boiling only go so far. Even Twinkies supposedly go bad, though that still remains to be proven.
Even stars die.
Ashes, ashes we all fall down.
What kind of fruit do our lives bear? What kind of fruit do we leave behind?
How long does it last?
So here is the amazing secret of the Universe. Only love lasts, not pickles, not Twinkies, not even the stars. What we do in love, how we live in love it is the ancient canning jar that gets passed down to the end of time and beyond.
That is what God is like, that love that lasts, that holds all things, that creates and restores all things, that judges all things.
Jesus is that love embracing all things.
Everything else turns to dust and is forgotten, even God lets it pass away into the darkness.
If that is the case, then I have wasted a great deal of time on that which is not love. It is time to fill up some more of those canning jars!
Friends. That is what Jesus calls those who follow him, those who live in love. Friend, it literally means loved one.
Friendship is a true treasure and gift. Some people are especially gifted at making and honoring friendship.
They reveal something wonderful about who God is and what life is all about.
One denomination simply calls themselves The Friends. Their worship services are called Friends meetings. I love that.
Friendship with God. That might be the most simple and direct statement of the life of faith. Not God’s buddy, or buddy Jesus like in that strange Matt Damon movie, but friend, loved one, honoring one another. Friendship with God.
Friendship. It holds the Universe together. It holds our souls. It holds all that lasts.
Everything else simply slips through the fingers and is gone. Even God lets it pass away into the darkness.
What we do in love. Loved ones. Friends.
These things abide, nothing else does.
They are the fruit that lasts.
Canning season has begun.
It is time to start turning over the jars and filling them up with all those peculiar colors of fruit, the fruit that lasts.