When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.”—John 6:12
I was driving down a backcountry road in September with an older Dutch woman from my church. We passed a field of apple trees littered with rotting apples that had fallen to the ground. My companion had a very visceral reaction.
“Pastor, my grandfather was a farmer in Holland,” she said. “He always taught us that wasting food was an evil sin. How do you feel about that?”
At the time, I didn’t know what to say. Like most Christians, I tended to think of sin as willful acts of disobedience. Apples fall off apple trees and rot on the ground. That’s just how it goes. In fact, that’s how trees reproduce.
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Image: Flickr/CC – Sue Kellerman
