David's Digest: Charity and Its Fruits, Part 1

The latest sermon series our group has been going through is Jonathan Edwards' sermon series on "Charity and Its Fruits." I had originally thought it might be a good series to go through as a group, but as we got into it, to me it is a most critical topic to be covered by anyone who claims to follow Christ.

Initially, we started listening to an audio version of the series I had found online, but sadly the speaker spoke way too fast, and it was very difficult to keep up. And so, I thought, hey, even I can read it; so I set out to find it in print online. I did find a print version, and started reading it to the group over a couple of weeks, but eventually discovered that what I was reading was just a small 18-page encapsulation of the whole sermon series, which was actually a 16 chapter book! And so, we started the series over, this time reading from the full chapters.

After chapter one, someone suggested we record them; and I figured, why not, since it was being read anyway. And so, here are the first eight parts that we've gone through (I had to go back and record chapter one, and then re-record chapter two because the printout I was reading from had some typos that made it difficult to get through -- now I'm reading from an actual book version):


Charity and Its Fruits, by Jonathan Edwards

Chapter 1: Charity, or Love, the Sum of all Virtue

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Chapter 2: Charity More Excellent Than the Extraordinary Gifts of the Spirit

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Chapter 3: The Greatest Performances of Sufferings in Vain Without Charity

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Chapter 4: Charity Disposes Us Meekly to Bear the Injuries Received from Others

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Chapter 5: Charity Disposes Us to Do Good

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Chapter 6: Charity Inconsistent With an Envious Spirit

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Chapter 7: The Spirit of Charity Is a Humble Spirit

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Chapter 8: The Spirit of Charity the Opposite of a Selfish Spirit

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I can't tell you enough how beneficial this has been to me, of course a lot of that uncovering my lacking, and learning about Christian charity in a much deeper and prayerfully more meaningful way. It is my prayer that God indeed grant us this Christian charity, for His glory and the benefit of His Church, and that we be in continual prayer for it.


The rest of the series is now available at "Charity and Its Fruits, Part 2."

-- David

Introducing the Hoevator

Since most of the chickens that we raise end up spending some time growing up in the chicken pen area, which was put in an area shaded with oak trees, they end up liking to stay, considering that home base, and often perch in the trees when bedding down for the night. Well, out here there are just too many harmful critters that roam around at night, so we try to make sure to get the chickens into the chicken tractor. If I couldn't stand on the chicken pen's coupe, I was having to climb some of the trees to get them down. This got tiresome quite quickly.

One night, I thought I would try to just poke them out of the tree with something, and decided to try using the garden hoe. When I put the hoe head up to the chicken to push underneath it, I believe it just sort of hopped on; and I was able to just lower it down while it sat perched on the hoe head. Hmmm....let me try that again. And it worked again! And again, and kept working with very good success! Hey, pretty nifty! So, we thought we'd offer a demonstration of the Hoevator in action!

Once in a while, especially if I start the process too early in the evening, the chicken will fly off; but for the most part, it all works very consistently.


I know, it's a simple thing, but it beats climbing the trees or trying to get the chickens to fly down. We're thankful to the Lord for Him allowing us to discover this little chicken-retrieving technique!

-- David