The beauty of olive groves

During these dull February days it’s good to remember sunnier ones!  On holiday a few months ago, walking along a dusty track through an olive grove, I found myself smiling, somewhat inanely, I fear.  Really, though, it was a response to the beauty all around me – the rich ochre soil, the gnarled grey trunks and shimmering grey-green leaves of the olive trees, and over all the intense blue of an endless Cretan sky.

But even lovelier to my mind was the discovery that such tracks are known as ‘Olive Keepers’ Tracks’.  So olive trees are cared for not by farmers, or growers, but by keepers.  And how appropriate that is, given that many of the trees are hundreds, or, in a few cases, thousands of years old.  Previous generations have ‘kept’ them, and handed them on, a precious inheritance.

Is not God’s revealed word a precious inheritance, kept for us by our forefathers?  Towards the end of his life, the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, ‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.’  He also exhorted Timothy to ‘continue in the things which you have learned’.  To Titus, who was actually in Crete at the time, he wrote urging that he should appoint elders who would ‘hold fast the faithful word as they have been taught.’

May we, like them, hold firmly to the ‘Holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.’  (2 Timothy 3:15)

O Word of God incarnate,

O Wisdom from on high,

O Truth unchanged, unchanging,

O Light of our dark sky,

We praise Thee for the radiance

That from the hallowed page,

A lantern to our footsteps,

Shines on from age to age.

                                      W W How

Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints -Jude 3