It’s been a bumper wheat crop this year. Not only are the silos full, but ginormous piles of wheat have popped up around the landscape waiting for trucks to come and ship out the abundance.
Farmers are rejoicing. For some, despite all their hard work, the harvests over the last few years have been extremely poor, so this year is a real blessing. Its something we city folk don’t get to think about too often when we grab a loaf of bread from the supermarket shelf.
A tiny grain of wheat can seem so insignificant and yet imagine a world without wheat … bread has been a staple food for civilisation since antiquity. Some early comers to Australia came here for stealing a loaf of bread to feed their starving families … for those living in poverty there was often no more than bread.
And Jesus took an ordinary, everyday, commonplace loaf of bread, broke it with his disciples and said, “Do this in remembrance of me”.
A tiny grain of wheat can seem so insignificant and yet imagine a world without wheat … bread has been a staple food for civilisation since antiquity. Some early comers to Australia came here for stealing a loaf of bread to feed their starving families … for those living in poverty there was often no more than bread.
And Jesus took an ordinary, everyday, commonplace loaf of bread, broke it with his disciples and said, “Do this in remembrance of me”.
He’s still in the habit of using the ordinary and often least significant to achieve his purposes. He takes our faltering faith, our best efforts to love, and our desire to give our all, even when strength fails us, and uses them for his glory and purpose.
It’s in the small things that he gives us the opportunity to be his hands and feet.
That came home to me this week as I read news from Dr Mardi Steere and her husband Andy, missionaries working at Kijarbe Hospital, Nairobi, Kenya.
Kijabe Hospital is faith-based, providing compassionate health care, excellent medical training and spiritual ministry in Christ. But right now the hospital is overwhelmed as doctors and medical personnel throughout Kenya have been on strike since early December. So many in need of urgent medical care are turning to Kijabe for help.
How do you cope when there are more patients than beds and staff to care for them and more babies who need ventilators than there are ventilators?
It’s in the small things that he gives us the opportunity to be his hands and feet.
That came home to me this week as I read news from Dr Mardi Steere and her husband Andy, missionaries working at Kijarbe Hospital, Nairobi, Kenya.
Kijabe Hospital is faith-based, providing compassionate health care, excellent medical training and spiritual ministry in Christ. But right now the hospital is overwhelmed as doctors and medical personnel throughout Kenya have been on strike since early December. So many in need of urgent medical care are turning to Kijabe for help.
How do you cope when there are more patients than beds and staff to care for them and more babies who need ventilators than there are ventilators?
Mardi sits quietly beside a tiny newborn who can’t breathe alone and becomes a ‘human ventilator’ … squeeze, release, squeeze, release , squeeze, release … for as long as it takes.
Please pray for strength for Mardi and the many other dedicated personnel at Kijabe Hospital, for whom being a 'human ventilator' for hours on end is one small example of sharing the love of Jesus among the suffering.
Oh the beauty of the ordinary. The wild, crazy, wonder of God in taking the ordinariness of our everyday lives and transforming it into a healing, saving, nourishing work, for his glory, our good and the blessing of others.
"Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. " John 12: 24
Please pray for strength for Mardi and the many other dedicated personnel at Kijabe Hospital, for whom being a 'human ventilator' for hours on end is one small example of sharing the love of Jesus among the suffering.
Oh the beauty of the ordinary. The wild, crazy, wonder of God in taking the ordinariness of our everyday lives and transforming it into a healing, saving, nourishing work, for his glory, our good and the blessing of others.
"Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. " John 12: 24
The 1970 Nobel Peace Prize was a relatively obscure agronomist by the name of Norman E. Borlaug. During the 60s Dr. Borlaug had developed high-yield, disease-resistant strains of wheat that he brought to the farms of India and Pakistan. The result was a green revolution. Both countries sextupled their grain production by the end of the decade, saving millions of lives in the process. Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.
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