A Second Harvest

by   August 2, 2025 with No Comments

By Doug Creamer

A Second Harvest

            How are you holding up with all this heat? Maybe by the time you read my column the heat wave will have broken. It’s so hot! Where I live, we have had very little rain to help trees, plants, and gardens. I have been watering regularly trying to keep everything alive. It’s been an uphill battle.

            I looked out the window at the vegetable garden and realized that I had an empty bed. I had harvested my potatoes – a good crop this year – and that space was available to plant. I didn’t want to go out and do it in the heat. BUT I do want a fall harvest. The only way to get a fall harvest is to plant things now. I made myself go out and get the bed ready for planting one evening and then went out another evening and planted some seeds.

            Another area of the garden will finish up in a couple of weeks and I am planning what I will put in that spot, too. Most people work to get their first tomatoes in by the 4th of July, but I was running late with my garden this year. I am hoping for my first tomato soon. I have eaten a few cherry tomatoes, but I can’t wait for a real one. I have enjoyed some tomatoes from a local farmer, but there is nothing like growing your own.

            We’ve had some successes and struggles with the garden this year. I am hoping for a second harvest. It is hard to imagine that the first frost will arrive in about 12 weeks, especially when we will probably hit 100 today. Picking the right vegetables and getting them started soon is critical if I want to get more from my garden.

            Last year we had a big harvest of green beans and butter beans in the fall. This year I haven’t had a green bean yet. Last year I got some late cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash. I am going to keep trying, keep pushing my luck against Mother Nature. It seems our first frost has been running later and later the last few years, so I am hopeful that I will get a harvest this year, too. I remember having to take some sheets out to cover things last year to protect my vegetables from frost.

            A second harvest requires hot, sweaty work. I have been sharing my harvest with the critters, but I believe I have gotten a bigger portion this year. In order to continue our harvest into the fall, I have to get out there in the heat and do the necessary work of cleaning out the weeds, preparing the seed bed, and planting the seeds.

            If we want to see the harvest of souls, it is going to require the same type of effort. Think of the world or those who have no relationship with God as an untamed garden bed. Someone has to clear out the weeds. Many people live in the world and pay no attention to spiritual matters. Their guide is worldly standards. Their measure of success comes from the value of the bank account. They look to social media for approval. These weeds need to be cleared away. We have to help them see their need for God and biblical standards.

            We help to prepare their hearts by expressing God’s love for them. We help them see that God has a purpose and a plan for their lives. We also help them see the error of their ways. But more than our words, we live our lives in front of them as an example. We show them by our choices, faith, and hope that there is a better way to live their lives. Once their hearts are ready, we can share the love of Jesus with them.

            Do you have family, friends, and neighbors who are lost and in need of a savior? I want to encourage you to ask God to help you be a weed puller, soil prepper, seed planter, the one who waters, or the one who harvests the lost soul. He will show you how. He can and will use you to share your faith in Christ with them. We never know how much time we have here on earth, but when that time is up we will have to stand before God. Make yourself available to share the Good News. The goal is make a way for them to hear what we all want to hear, “Well done my good and faithful servant. Enter your master’s rest.” Pray and do what he tells you.

Contact Doug Creamer at PO Box 777, Faith, NC 28041or doug@dougcreamer.com

Seasons and Sadie

by   August 1, 2025 with No Comments

By Roger Barbee

            Sometime last week I first noticed the seasonal changes on the mountain. Working in the raised flower garden, I went to the shop for some pruning shears and on the way back, I glanced to the saddle just south of Edinburg Gap. Yep, there was a light touch of yellow, gold, and specks of red. Since that day last week, the change has spread along the ridge, causing the mountain to take on an array of colors like those of an artist’s palette.

            However, before the cold and snow of another winter arrives,  we have weeks of sharp, vibrant colors to enjoy. Not only have leaves begun to turn on the ridge of the mountain, but I have seen some sugar maple leaves turning.  It is indeed a magical season that seems to have arrived unannounced, but I know that lack of awareness  is about me and not the seasonal cycle. Yet, we all are often taken aback by how quickly the change of seasons happens. On the last day of September, while working on a doll house in the shop, I opened the large doors that face the mountain so I could see the same saddle from last week.  I glanced up often to marvel at  how the colors had increased. Not only had the ridge taken on more color, but also the base shone with a dull orange tinge that announced the coming change. Sanding and painting the intricate parts of the doll house, I thought how as this seasonal change has come  many of us in the valley have continued on with our daily lives—the joys, the sorrows, the squabbles, and the mundane, without taking heed of the dramatic change happening on the mountain and around us. Then I thought of Sadie and her words to Mary Ann, my wife.

          When Mary Ann and I first met, one of the first people in her life about whom she told me was her long-time friend, Sadie, who now lives in Gettysburg. Attending the same church, Sadie and Mary Ann had shared much in their lives until Sadie was called to counsel violent, male prisoners in the Pennsylvania state system. Over the years of her prison counseling, Sadie came to realize that, until she became an ordained minister, she would be limited by the restraints of the state prison system. So, this  spunky lady in her late fifties enrolled in the Lutheran Seminary in Gettysburg so that she could do more for “her” violent prisoners. After years of hearing about her and her work in the prisons with the men that she said had been forgotten, I was finally going to meet her.

         Sadie and Mike, her husband, invited family and friends to her ordination. It was a lovely service in an old Lutheran Church near Gettysburg. However, what struck me was how much energy flowed from the small frame of Sadie. Like many celebrations, her ordination was over a weekend, but her glass-framed, smiling face seemed to be in all places with all her family and friends. With her ordination, her prison outreach expanded, and we began regular trips to Gettysburg to race the local marathon, see the historical sights, and share time with Sadie and Mike.

                        Sometimes we would share time with both, but on occasion  Mike would be out of town, so we had Sadie to ourselves. She showed us interesting, seemingly unknown parts of her hometown, she shared with us her work in the prison system, and her work as an assistant pastor. She told us how the men she ministered to had done horrible, unspeakable things, but also how they were human beings who had suffered abuse. She could sit over a meal and tell of these men without  judging; she acknowledged their horrific crimes and their humanity. And always, she was cheerful, bright, wise, and kind. Then  three years ago she shared, over a light salad, how she was having discomfort and could not eat much. That discomfort progressed into cancer.

                        Tears. Treatments. Pain. Fears. All of it and more, she and her family have gone through  much. Yet, like some people, Sadie has somehow continued to smile and radiate energy—until this week when she told Mary Ann, “I knew this would happen (her decline). Do what you have to do…it happens so fast.” The vibrant, loving lady who went to seminary late in life in order to serve humanity now has only about an hour of energy each day.

                        Change is happening on the mountain and in our lives. In the midst of all that change,  we are occupied with the ordinary concerns of life. But, are we living or just going through the motions? Perhaps we should heed Sadie’s words-”it happens so fast”-and do what really matters.

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