Gingerbread Crumbs & Company

But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God: I trust in the mercy of God for ever and ever.

PSALM 62:8

The olive is crushed into oil, and is used for soothing and supplying joints and flesh, for nourishing and sustaining the body as food, for illuminating darkness as oil in the lamp. And these three things are the things for which we Christian people have received all our gentleness, and all our beauty, and all our strength-that we may give other people light, that we may be the means of conveying to other people nourishment, that we may move gently in the world as lubricating, sweetening, soothing influences-not irritating or provoking, not leading to strife or alienation. The question after all, is this: Does anybody gather fruit off us, and would anybody call us "trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified"? May we all open our hearts for the dew from heaven, and then use it to produce in ourselves... fruitfulness!

Alexander Maclaren (1826-1910)