Before the calendar flipped over to the month of May, the first fruits of the Spring garden were ready for harvest. Nevermind that it was a modest harvest, bunches of tender fresh turnip greens, cool weather culinary herbs, and a single blackberry, the joy of stewarding growing food paid not the slightest bit of attention to the size of the bounty.
Of particular delight was the single blackberry. For my birthday this year, my sister gifted me two Prime Ark Freedom blackberry plants. At the time that I plucked that first blackberry, the plants had only been in the ground for a few weeks. I hadn’t even had time to properly trellis them yet. But, no matter. Suddenly, there it was as plain as day, a plump, ripe blackberry amongst the tinier green berries, leaves and flowers, proudly heralding its triumph as the first fruit on the cane.
First fruits in the Bible holds significant spiritual and symbolic meaning for followers of Jesus Christ. The concept of first fruits refers to the practice of dedicating the first and the best portion of one’s harvest to God as an act of worship and gratitude. Even today, it is a way of acknowledging that all blessings come from God. It’s a posture of the heart that expresses trust and reliance on God’s goodness and constant provision for His people.
Recently, we have celebrated the holy day of Easter, the celebration of Christ’s resurrection from the dead, the reality of which every first fruits offering ever pointed. Christ’s obedience to God, the Father, in the offering of His flesh at Calvary and His glorious resurrection on the third day, both epitomizing everything this offering stands for, specifically, God’s sovereign rule over the whole of creation.
In the New Testament, Jesus’ resurrection is referred to as the “first fruits” of the resurrection signifying both the promise and the hope of eternal life for all believers at a future date. That is, that we, too, will one day be resurrected to reign with Him for eternity.
In gratitude for my own simple first fruits harvest this Spring, especially that unexpected single blackberry, I searched and found a liturgy from Every Moment Holy (Vol 1) appropriate for my own heart posture of worship.
O Creator who calls forth life, May this ground, and our labors here invested, yield good provision for the nourishing of both body and soul.
Lord, let our labors in this garden be fruitful. Lord, let our labors in this garden be blessed.
As we work the soil of this garden plot, furrowing, planting, watering, and harvesting may such acts become to us a living parable, a prayer acted out rather than spoken. As we co-labor with you and with your creation to produce a beneficial harvest, may we find in such toil a kind of rest. May this plot of ground become a hallowed space and these hours a sacred time for reflection, for conversation with friends and family, and for fellowship with you, our Creator.
Through our tending of your delightful creations–vegetables and fruits, beans and berries, vines and stalks, and roots and flowers–renew our own tired hopes, redeem our own wearied imaginations. As we cultivate gentle order, training, pruning, weeding, and protecting, so cultivate and train our wayward hearts, O Lord, that rooted in you the forms of our lives might spread in winsome witness, maturing to bear the good fruit of grace, expressed in acts of compassionate love.
Walk with us now, O Lord, in the stillness of this tilled and quiet space, that when we venture again into the still greater garden of your world, we might be prepared by the long practice of your presence, to offer our lives as a true and nourishing provision to all who hunger for mercy, and hope, and meaning, a true and nourishing provision to all who hunger for you. Amen.