How many of you have been, like the little maid in our pictures, nutting in the woods this beautiful autumn season? Did you know that the ripe brown nuts you have gathered and eaten were little cradles in which baby trees were snuggly wrapped up?

The infant plant is very small, and the most of what is in the shell is food stored up by the parent tree for the use of its offspring when it shall be waked to life by the spring sunshine, and begin to stretch and grow. {

The leaves which are now fast falling from the trees and making a rustling carpet for the ground, have been busy all the summer, gathering from sun and air food for the growth and nourishment of the tree. And besides providing for itself, each plant, each shrub, each tree sets apart something precious, gives out of its own life something for the good of others and for blessing to the world. That which is thus set apart each year, and given up by the plants when the summer’s work is over and the leaves begin to tall, we call seed.

The flowering plants in your gardens that have ceased to bloom, have made provision for next year’s blossoms, whose sweetness is wrapped up in the little seeds you have perhaps gathered from them, to plant in the spring season. Thus God

“Ere one flower season fades and dies
Designs the blooming wonders of the next.”

In the seed we call corn or wheat, that has been gathered in from the fields, there is provision not for our food for a time only, but for all future harvests while the world shall stand.

And in the nuts, the seed of the tree, sleep the young trees that shall refresh the earth and sweeten the air with their green leaves, and give us food in coming years.

“Lo, on each seed within its slender rind,
Life’s golden threads in endless circles wind;
Grain within grain successive harvest swell,
And boundless forests slumber in a shell.”

For the beginning of all that we see in the earth to-day, we must go back to the very first plants that God planted in Paradise, to the seed from which they all came, the Word of God. For it was this that produced all things, as you know: “He spoke, and it was.”

And this Word of power, this wonderful storehouse from which all good things come to us, is the Lord Jesus Christ, the same Word that was “made flesh and dwelt among us.” He who came forth out of Bethlehem, which means “the House of Bread,” is the One who from His own fulness is giving us this day our daily bread.

In the yearly harvest yielded by all nature, God wants us to see His Word working, to see the Lord Jesus Christ doing just what He did in the beginning, when He commanded the earth to bring forth trees and plants bearing fruits and seeds.

Everything that God made He commanded to “be fruitful, and multiply and fill the earth.” So from the first man, Adam, whom He placed perfectly formed in the first garden that He planted, has come a great multitude that no man can number, scattered in every part of the world.

And from the first trees and plants that He put perfect into the new earth, the whole world has been made to bud and bring forth fruit, and has been filled with gardens for the children of Adam to inhabit and with food to sustain their lives. All this has been but the unfolding of the seed, the working of the Word that was is “in the beginning.”

God made this world for man, and all that He put into it was for his use and pleasure. “Pleasant to the sight and good for food” were all the trees in the garden of Eden.

“Nothing we see but means our good,
As our delight or as our treasure,
The whole is either our cupboard of food,
Or cabinet of pleasure.”
(George Herbert.)

See in what pleasant ways our Heavenly Father feeds us: He makes the food that He provides pleasant to the sight, fragrant to the smell, and sweet to the taste. He puts delicate and beautiful flavours into it in such variety that we need never become tired of the same taste.

When we take only what God has provided for us, in just the way He gives it to us, we get the pleasure and the most strength; for He who made us knows just what we need, and we may be sure that He has provided it in the very best way.

So remember, dear children, when you take the beautiful fruits, grains and nuts that God is handing to you through nature, you are coming to Lord’s table, to the House of Bread, to Jesus the Storehouse “in whom all fullness dwells.” Remember that you are feeding from Him who came that you might have life, and who is giving out His own life to you in all the food that He provides for your daily deeds.

“All good gifts around us,
Are sent from Heaven above;
Then thank the Lord, O thank the Lord,
For all His love.”

“The tempter whispers in our ear, ‘You have no time to pray;’
But he never tells the gambler that he has not time to play;
He never tells the drunkard that he has no time to drink
The poison that benumbs his soul, and kills his power to think.”

The Present Truth – October 11, 1900
E. J. Waggoner

Gods Storehouse