Having Church Among the Vegetables

DSC_0173-1, originally uploaded by Shirley Buxton.

On the way home, with a short list in my hand, I stopped by the grocery store…and, it was in the produce section among the peppers that I spent most of my time. Piles of the beauties had been stacked high, and the department manager must have come across a great buy, for the colored bells were only 2 for a dollar, and that’s much cheaper than I usually pay. Oh, they were splendid. Mounded high, their colors ranged from deep, almost chocolate red, to a yellow, so clear, it was nearly translucent. A few of the yellows still showed bright green at the stem.

I gently pawed over the offerings and finally picked the ones I wanted and tucked them away in a plastic bag I had pulled from the roll. As I pushed my cart deeper into the vegetable area, I found another large display of peppers and thought the red ones there might be prettier, so I traded in what had been my first choice, and…was finally content with my bag of peppers.

I think I went to church yesterday—there in the produce section of the market. As I selected lush fruit and vegetables, and later as I photographed them, I thought of the Genesis—the beginning—and I imagined God as He designed peppers and their stems and corn with fine silk tassels and the red orbs we call tomatoes and the green globes we know as artichokes.

I read again the splendid story of creation, when God thought, and knew, and designed, and created:

“And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

And the evening and the morning were the third day.”

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