Pumpkin Patch

Last night, under a glorious half-moon, we harvested a lovely crop of pumpkins at our place. They are at varying stages of ripeness, but with the danger of frost that evening, we decided to bring them in.

This is a very special crop of pumpkins. We never watered them. We didn't weed them. We didn't tend them in any way. In fact, we didn't even know that these pumpkins existed until a couple of weeks ago!

My husband discovered these pumpkins when he was out checking the cattle in the pasture close to our house. Here they were, growing in a dirt/burn pile we have in our pasture. This pile is waiting for a calm, damp day to be burned, which never quite happened this summer, and so instead became a pumpkin patch, unbeknownst to us.

It is not a great mystery how pumpkins came to be growing in our burn pile. Each year, I purchase a pumpkin for the kids to carve. Last year, I decided to buy an extra one to make into pie or soup. The one previous time I tried to make a pumpkin into a pie it resulted in a lumpy stew which could hardly be called a puree, and so I have never tried it again. However, my husband has made a pumpkin soup before that he was interested in trying again. The carved pumpkin's face had long since collapsed and ended up in the compost, and still this other, extra pumpkin sat on a shelf awaiting it's fate. And still longer. And perhaps Christmas came and went and squashes of any variety are remarkably long-lived.

Eventually, I got tired of looking at the pumpkin and it's only good use was to be smashed and shot at, which the boys were eager to take care of. They took the pumpkin out to the burn pile and first used it as target practice and then finished it off by smashing it to pieces, effectively scattering the seeds. And spring came, and the seeds grew and flowers blossomed and pumpkins formed and now we are the proud owners of 13 pumpkins. Which is really quite a happy thing.

Earlier this week, I went to visit my husband's aunt in the hospital. Just before I left, I asked her if she would like me to read a Bible passage to her. She suggested a passage and I went ahead read it. She said, “That was very nice, but that was not the passage I asked for.” Eventually, I located the right passage and read that too. But it was the first, “wrong” passage that stuck with me.

                        Here is a trustworthy saying:

                                If we died with him,

                                   we will also live with him;

                               if we endure,

                                  we will also reign with him.

                               If we disown him,

                                  he will also disown us;

                              if we are faithless,

                                 he will remain faithful,

                                for he cannot disown himself.

                                                     2 Timothy 2:11-13

God is faithful. God cannot be untrue to his character. And God is the consummate creator of new beginnings, the God of redemption. So that even with our failed attempts and neglected obligations, God still creates something new, some unexpected blessing, even for the faithless. Sort of like our pumpkin. We had left it too long to be of any good and it ended up on the garbage heap. But that wasn't the end of the story, even though we thought it was. The God of creation took over and life began again. It kind of makes me want to do something proper with these pumpkins we have now, to make that pie or that soup, to not just let them go to waste. Now, if I can just remember that life can grow up from the ashes of other, larger, life mistakes, there would be a lot of Thanksgiving to be had.