My gardening parents and grandparents were strong in their beliefs about food. It should be high quality. More often than not, you should have raised the food yourself. You would know what feed the livestock ate or what fertilizer you put on the garden. There would be no question of quality.

The next precept they were clear on was to eat the food that was “in season”. If it was summer, the sky was the limit. Tomatoes, limas, corn, peas, watermelons, cantaloupes. In spring, lettuce, onions, beets, greens. Fall..pumpkin, acorn squash, turnips, kale, mustard greens…just to name a few. It was important to my family that we canned our vegetables or put them in the freezer. That the summer abundance would last through winter. But they always stressed to us that we must eat the vegetables that were growing in that season of the year.

I guess it makes sense. If a vegetable grows at a certain time, we must need those particular nutrients in our bodies in that season.

It is so easy to discern whether we are in spring, summer, fall or winter. But it is much more difficult sometimes to discern the spiritual season someone is in.

The words we speak to a grieving person are not the same words we speak to a bride and groom. The encouraging words we speak to new parents differ from the words we speak to parents grieving the loss of a child. Like the food we eat in season, we need the correct spiritual and emotional nourishment for the season we are experiencing.

Again, it seems so simple. Eat correctly. Speak correctly. Sometimes not even speak. Sit and grieve or rejoice together. No words needed. Words well spoken at the correct moment feed our hearts the same as eating the “in season” food nourishes our bodies.

“Like apples of gold in settings of silver is a word spoken in right circumstances.” Proverbs 25:11 NASB

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those that love it will eat its fruit.” Proverbs 18:21 NASB