Thinking inside the box

This week I was leading a harvest assembly for a primary school. There was, I told them, something very special in a box I had brought.
The children could tell that it was quite heavy and rattled when shaken. It would, I told them, if you did the right things with it, produce

• a woolly jumper,
• a drink of orange juice
• a story book
• an apple
• a cuddly sheep

Could they guess what was in the box?

They came up with

• credit cards - but they don't produce anything but debt
• money - but that doesn't produce anything, it just enables people to buy what others have produced
  
• love - a pretty good guess at many school assemblies but that's not heavy or rattles when you shake it
• a statue of Jesus - Well if the answer isn't "love" then usually it's "Jesus" but not today!!!

Have you worked out what was in the box yet???

It was soil, dirt, earth, compost. Not something we usually value but the basis for supplying most of our needs. In the Genesis 2 account of God creating man, He makes Adam from the Adamah, Compo from the compost, and tells Compo to serve and keep the earth from which he is created.

That "serving and keeping" of the earth is generally done for us by farmers.