A Pathway of Friendship

I recently stopped by the Zuck Homestead to see Davey and pick up a cantaloupe. After knocking on the front and back doors and receiving no answer I thought I’d walk down to the house that was once our home to see if Davey and Sally were there. I knew they were getting the vacant house ready to rent and thought they might be there finishing their work.

The path between the houses was as familiar to me as the furniture in our home, and in retracing my steps from the vacant house back to their home (they were not at the house), where my car was parked, I thought about the many times we traversed that path from one house to another during our sojourn on the Zuck Homestead – Davey and Sally visiting us and us visiting Davey and Sally. I am especially fond of recollecting the winter evenings we sat together in front of a fire and talked and read to one another and told stories and shared life experiences. Those were holy evenings spent in sacred friendship.

The pathways of friendship are sacred, and the more well-worn the more sacred they are – sacramental indeed, precious…more to be desired than any material wealth the age can offer. I think I should like a shovel full of that dirt to be placed on my coffin when I am laid to rest. 

The Cantaloupe

There was a knock on our door late on a Thursday evening a couple of weeks ago, it was Davey; in this arm was a cantaloupe rivaling the size of a basketball. It was as if he had returned with the twelve spies from Canaan, bringing examples of the fruit of the land.

Davey’s cantaloupe patch could have been mistaken for an organic basketball farm this season, the size of the fruit was amazing – he had come to share the fruit of his land.

I have never been able to grow cantaloupe, in fact the only good cantaloupe that has ever grown in our garden came from volunteer seeds that were in a load of topsoil that we purchased. Yes, there was that time a year or two ago when we had a couple of ripe melons in our garden from seed which we planted, but before we picked them critters got them – they looked good, they looked like they’d taste good…but we’ll never know.

We are thankful that Davey brought us a cantaloupe, it could have fed 5,000 – as it is we are still enjoying it.

I am thankful that others can grow what I cannot, I am thankful that others can produce what I have no talent for. Isn’t envy just about the dumbest thing you can think of? Isn’t jealously stupid? Maybe one day I will grow good cantaloupe, and if so then I hope I’m smart enough to give it away, to knock on someone’s door and share it. In the meantime I’ll be thankful for the gift of growing melons that God has given to Davey and others.

How My Friend Is Praying

At lunch this past Wednesday my friend George Bowers said, "I've stopped praying that we'll have godly leaders. Now I'm praying that there will be people who want godly leaders."

Amen.