RENEWED HOPE FROM GARLIC

I AM NOT A GARDENER.  I AM NOT A GARDENER.

I AM NOT A GARDENER.

However,

Since retirement I have been "playing" with a few plants.

(O.K.  Killed a bunch of plants.)

My favorite is garlic because it is harder for me to kill.

I have been playing with garlic for four or five years.

As a result I have learned two or three things about garlic,

if I could just remember what it was.

This year I put out several different kinds of garlic I

wanted to try.  [I know.  It works best for me in the fall.

But I am not always in the mood in the fall.]

However due to the drought, it looked like a complete loss

for several that good money had been paid for.

While walking around the "forsaken" garden plots

one day - Praise God - I found these plants.

The top picture is an "elephant" garlic that somehow

survived.

The above picture is the result of cloves brought in from

Bangkok Thailand, and promptly killed - all by myself.

This one is "Fred's" garlic.

Fred has been dead for years now.  But in a gardening effort about

20 years ago he gave me a garlic start.  He did not know what kind

of garlic it was.  Only that it was, Good.

Of course I soon gave up on my gardening efforts, including the 

garlic.  But after about 20 years of total neglect, in the bushes,

 under a tree, here is some "Fred's" garlic trying to go again.

Praise God.

Through this God drew my attention to the apostle Paul's comment.

"For this reason we never become discouraged.  Even though our

physical being is gradually decaying, yet our spiritual being

is renewed day after day.  And this small and temporary

trouble we suffer will bring us a tremendous and eternal glory,

much greater than the trouble.  For we fix our attention, 

not on things that are seen, but on things that are unseen.

What can be seen lasts only for a time, but what cannot

be seen lasts forever."

(2 Corinthians 4:16-18 GNB)