Random Review- Installment 7, Gathering & Preserving

How soon we have found ourselves at the peak of summer, with a sudden onslaught of things to gather and preserve, not to mention the fresh fruit and other treats to dine on!

This is not a bad thing, but one can feel easily overwhelmed by all the good things coming at once, like sitting down to a buffet with too many choices!

For instance, today I canned 21 quarts of green beans, added to the growing pile of cukes taking over the bottom shelf in my fridge and waiting to be turned into pickles, and picked a gallon of blueberries.

So much abundance and so brief of a span of time in which to enjoy it all! The saying, "Use it or lose it!" is never truer than when applied to fresh produce!

I do not preserve food as extensively as many people do, but there are a few staples that I like to keep in stock, such as strawberry jam, frozen strawberries and blueberries, green beans, corn, pickles, certain tomato products, peaches and applesauce. Occasionally there is an interesting diversion (this year it was canning whole plums for the first time!) but for the main I have learned what we're actually going to make use of and what will just be a waste of time and jars!

When I was first married, for instance, I was under the delusion that we needed about 52 quarts of grape juice, so that we could drink about one jar a week! Well...we still have jars of grape juice down there with 2007 written on the lid, and it's probably all a bit closer to wine than juice by now! For whatever reason, we simply don't use much grape juice, so that's one thing I no longer worry about and we seem to still seem to be pretty good Mennonites without the ritual of serving it with a big bowl of popcorn on Sunday evenings!

Another thing that I did too much of that first year was peaches! There again I must have thought we would eat at least one quart a week, for I did way more than we actually used, and now a few 2007 jars of rather mushy peaches still lurk on my canning shelves, even though I've canned fresh numerous times since! I guess the memory of that summer and all the slaving I did over those canning projects while pregnant with Elasa makes it hard to get rid of them!

I was thinking about this whole thing of preserving things and how, just as I've needed to learn through trial and error what is worth my time to preserve and what is not, so we need to learn in life what is worth our sweat and tears.

Our church has been having a lot of discussion over what we wish to preserve, especially in areas of dress, hairstyles, and other particular things that are important to us as a body and to the plain people at large, and the questions that comes to me out of it all are these:

"What matters to God?"

"What are the things that, once preserved, will be used to advance His Kingdom in both the present and future hour?"

If I am trying to stuff certain aspects of conduct and dress into a jar and preserve it for the future just because that's what we've always done, that's not good enough, but if we hold the things that are up for debate to the light of what we know about God and His Word, then we can actually preserve the things that matter in a way that makes sense.

I have learned that preserving something is only worthwhile if it serves some future purpose, and that goes for plums and cape dresses alike.

God give us wisdom for both.