Claire was already going down to the shed with a carrier full of berries, while Beth still had a box and a half to go before hers would be ready. She never could figure out how anyone could pick so fast and still clean the hushes. It was quiet there away from the noise of the cars on the highway. The chattering of a chipmunk, an occasional bird call and sounds from the distant logging camp were all that broke the stillness.
Carefully she unsnagged a branch that had caught in her hair, then reached for a stem fairly loaded with dark purple berries. At that very moment a well aimed berry hit her square on the back of her neck.
"All right, Claire!" But then she remembered, Claire was down unloading at the shed. She almost got snagged again in the same branch as she whirled around. There stood the biggest man she had ever seen! Perhaps he wasn't, but she was almost petrified at finding herself face to face with a total stranger.
He had a friendly smile. "Sorry I gave you such a start. I just walked toward town from the logging camp and here's what I ran into." He sampled a few berries from a bush. She still hadn't recovered her power of speech. "My rigger broke down and they have to splice a cable, so I have time on my hands" he said as he flipped a few more berries into his mouth. He was a young man and she didn't doubt his story, but what should she say to him? She found words at last. "Do you know the Lord Jesus as your personal Saviour?" "No," he replied with an amused smile.
“Well, you really should, because we don't know when the Lord is coming and we should be ready to meet Him." "I suppose so" was the answer.
“Why don't you go to the tent meeting tonight? Maybe you will get saved." "Maybe I might" was the quiet answer this time. "It's at 7:30" Beth continued. "All right, it's a promise" the big man said suddenly. "But I'll have to go now. Goodbye.”
He disappeared as quickly as he had come. Claire could hardly believe that Beth had really had a visitor. That night after practically everyone was seated in the big tent, and the singing had begun, a tall young lumberjack ducked his head to enter the tent and quietly took a back seat. Claire and Beth silently prayed for him. The speaker opened with the verse, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Gal. 6:77Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. (Galatians 6:7). To illustrate it, he read from Gen. 27 through 37 of how Jacob deceived his aged father Issaac to get the blessing that his father intended to give his brother Esau. In later years Jacob himself was deceived, first by his father-in-law's giving him the wrong wife.
But that was only part of the reaping (or getting paid back). Later, when he was old, his sons deceived him by dipping the coat of his dearly loved son Joseph in the blood of a kid so that he might think a wild animal had slain him. He went on to say that if we reject God's offer of mercy now, in that coming day He will refuse us an entrance into heaven. But if we sow in faith, accepting Christ as our Saviour, we shall reap the reward of faith which is heaven and an eternity with Christ.
Beth was not able to be present the next evening but she did not forget to pray for the young lumberjack. That night about nine-thirty she was awakened by the chugging sound of an old Model T heading up toward the lumber camp.
Suddenly it stopped right on the hillside road going past the picker's camp. Two voices rich in harmony rang out joyfully in the night air, with the strains of a familiar hymn. Beth recognized the voice of one of them, though she never saw him again. When the last note of the hymn was finished the car sputtered into motion and was gone.
Suddenly she wondered if truly there had been fruit for eternity out in that berry patch...