On New Year's Day, we ate some peaches from Brook Lawn Farm Market, just up the road. They had been frozen fresh from the tree in August, and one bite in January was like a taste of summer bursting into the cold grayness of winter. Friends offered persimmon, another locally-grown treat, which is the most stunning shade of reddish orange and tastes delicious, too. And isn't it wonderful when someone coming home from Florida brings a few handpicked grapefruits and navel oranges along?

It's been said that God desires spiritual fruits, not religious nuts.

Galations 5:22-23 lists the Fruit(s) of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness (generosity), faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And then it says: There is no law against these things!

That may be so, but sometimes, they are in awfully short supply. How do we get more of these fruits in our daily diet? More patience, more peace, more self-control? Wouldn't life taste wonderful if we could?

Join us in January and February as we plant seeds, prune, fertilize, and otherwise prepare to harvest an orchard full of fruit.

We are a people with a Grand View of God as giver of life and grace . . . a Grand View of the church as the gathered community of God's grateful ones . . . a Grand View of humanity as co-creators with God of a world of peace and justice.