In the Fall 1997 issue of Proclaim! magazine, David Clay described the time he served as a youth minister in a small farming and dairy community in Kentucky. He wrote that the people of the church were very generous with their garden produce–including their squash. He and his wife didn’t like squash, but tried every recipe they could think of to use the squash anyway. Clay wrote that they got more than they could eat, and began storing the squash in a storage room at the house. Before long, the rotten smell of squash permeated the entire house. There was no garbage pick-up, and they didn’t feel they could sneak the squash away. In his words, “In small communities nothing is a secret. We were afraid someone would see us and think we were ungrateful.”
So they did the only thing they could think of–they buried the squash one night in a flower bed behind the house. But–you guessed it–the next spring, the squash was coming up in the flower bed!
Here’s what he learned. Clay wrote, “What happens when life brings you squash, too much squash? What happens when you have more problems than you can handle?” The application can go many different directions from here, but in thinking about Thanksgiving, what does your “squash” look like? Can you be grateful even for the things you don’t like? Clay continued: “When problems get to be too much, remember, there’s more to life than just squash. Life has its tomatoes, corn, okra, lettuce, and butter beans. So be joyful: rejoice! In this life even when we have a large amount of squash, the reality is we have so much more than squash.”
