Mother's Love

    My brothers and I grew up on a farm in rural Minnesota. Times were hard and we were relatively poor. (Although we did not know it at the time). I like to tell people that we were so poor that we could not afford shoes in the summer time, so we would go bare footed all summer. (Which was true).
   Even though we did not have much money, mom always made sure we were fed. She knew how to stretch food to feed our family. She would mix pieces of bread with fried potatoes, which we actually enjoyed. We ate a lot of potatoes, mashed with butter and cream.
   Mom made the best of the garden foods: potatoes, peas, green beans, onions, corn on the cob, etc...  We spent hours and days pulling weeds in the garden and could not wait until the harvest was ready. Much of it never reached the dinner table as we ate as much as we could right from the garden. Simply brush off the dirt and chomp away.
   She canned everything she could, fruits and vegetables. Every fall we would head for the woods with buckets to gather black berries and raspberries. We would make a day of it. What ever we did not eat on the spot, we took home, usually several pails full. Then would come the pies, jellies, and above all berries on ice cream.
   She also loved to bake bread, although I never figured out why she even tried. Our goal was to never let warm bread from the oven get cold. She made the best caramel roles in the world, which again very seldom made it to the supper table. There was something about walking into the house with the smell of fresh baked bread. To us it was like saying "sickem" to a dog.
   When ever she made a pie or cake for a meal, we had an unspoken pact that there would not be any left overs for the next meal. We would finish the whole cake in one meal. That was just common sense. One of the best treats was when mom would take left over pie crust, put sugar and cinnamon on it and bake it in the oven.
   I will admit that she always over baked meat in the oven. We had a lot of roast beef that was charred on the edges, but WELL DONE!!!  
   Milk was fresh milk from the cow with the cream skimmed off. The cream would go on the morning cereal. Every morning dad would have a bowl of Corn Flakes. To this day I will not eat Corn Flakes.
   Today's Verse is from Philippians 4:19, which says that God will provide our needs according to His riches in glory. If my mom could take little of nothing and provide for us, think what God can do with all the riches of glory at His disposal. This is not just food, clothing and water. His riches include His grace, strength, salvation and much more.