Abstract
Late in the pre-pandemic winter of 2019, a small group began meeting around the idea of establishing a small seminary supported by a small produce farm. The onset of the pandemic meant the end of in-person work to advance the seminary. The group turned itself to COVID-safe farming work instead. Ps 103 and Rom 8:18-25 aid in reflecting on lessons about farming, faith, and community learned from the midst of a vegetable patch during a global pandemic.
Introduction 1
Shall I begin with a short version of the still-unfolding story that began in the winter of 2019 and brings me here today? Late in that pre-pandemic winter, a group of five folks began meeting around the idea of establishing a small seminary that would be supported by a small produce farm. Students at this seminary, alongside faculty and community volunteers, would provide labor for the farm. The proceeds from sale of the farm’s produce, primarily through a CSA model, would provide the seminary’s operating costs. 2 Students would thus be able to attend seminary without tuition and housing expenses. From cheese to eggs to beer and even locally to fruitcake, this basic premise is a re-imagining of a centuries-old practice: religious communities supporting themselves through some type of small-scale industry. The initial idea grew, became an endeavor, and got a name, Sophia Theological Seminary and Sophia Farms, as the group of five began moving small-step-by-small-step toward bringing the idea into reality. And then, we arrived, with the rest of the global community, at March 2020.
The onset of the pandemic meant the end of the work we had been doing to advance the seminary, as the work was nearly all meeting individuals, groups, and congregations in person. Like so much else in our lives, all those efforts came to a halt. The group of five had no inkling of how to proceed. We thought the project was going to end before it had an opportunity to begin.
Unexpectedly (to wildly understate the situation), into that bewildering void stepped one of the endeavor’s trustees, a pastor-farmer, who offered that our group could run a pilot farming project on her central Virginia farm; a project we could safely undertake within the constraints of COVID. And so, in the spring of 2020, our project executed a pandemic-induced swerve, and the group of five (now six) shifted focus from advancing the seminary to piloting the farming operations. We planted a 10th of an acre of Roma tomatoes and a smaller plot of cayenne and serrano peppers. (If you are not familiar, those are hot ones: small, red, and mighty!)
Then and now, I think of that pilot plot as nothing less than miraculous. At a time when our leadership had no sense of how to move forward, through this trustee’s inspiration and generosity, led, as she tells it, by the prompting of God’s spirit, we had an experience that was amazing, life-giving, and hope-filled, smack dab in the midst of the life-draining difficulties facing our world, our community, and our fledgling project.
Thus, I stand here now as the testimony to how a biblical scholar, working in a group organized around a commitment to theological education, came to learn more than she ever imagined possible while covered in sweat and bug spray, standing in the middle of a pandemic vegetable patch.
To be sure, some of the lessons I learned were fairly basic and straightforward. For example,
Sometimes you absolutely must put your head down and get to the end of the row. And then sometimes you absolutely must take a break.
Having rotten and rotting tomato flesh squashed firmly into the tread of your shoes makes for a pretty unpleasant 45-minute car ride home.
The end of a good, hard day is always bittersweet.
The most perfect fruit is rarely in plain view.
The tomato you grow yourself tastes better than all other tomatoes. Without exception.
While a port-a-potty is essential, genuine hospitality requires little else.
Eventually, despite any obstacle, even a global pandemic, church people will figure out a way to eat together when they gather together.
In the hands of inspired and committed (and infinitely stubborn) people, a brilliant idea will never be thwarted . . . not even by a global pandemic.
Along with these basic lessons, however, I certainly learned many more complex, challenging, and important lessons, lessons that confronted us during the pandemic and because of it, but lessons that also remain significant in the pandemic’s aftermath, as the global community continues to move forward, to recover, and to heal. Allow me to share four of those lessons.
Lesson 1: 90% of farming is about the dirt. The other 10%, pretty much one way or another, is also about the dirt
In our farming, we are applying the practices of sustainable agriculture. In general terms, sustainable agriculture is a focus on developing and maintaining practices intentionally designed for the long-term and holistic thriving of the land, of those who work on it, and of those who benefit from its produce. The Sophia Farms website has a glossary page so visitors can learn a bit about sustainable agriculture. The glossary begins with an explanation of the term “sustainable agriculture” and then proceeds with definitions of 11 terms, all key principles and practices for a sustainable agriculture system. Of those 11 terms, no fewer than eight, relate directly to the soil, and two of the remaining three terms also relate fairly closely to the soil. 3 The origin, the source, the beginning of a successfully sustainable farming venture is what lies at the very bottom of it: the dirt.
But, of course, Christians should already hear and understand the truth echoing in this discovery, because we already know well the sacred story of our own origins, of our source. The beginning for all humanity is also there in the dirt. “For God knows how we were formed; God remembers that we are dust” (Ps 103:14). We humans began and remain dust, soil, earth, dirt.
And I can testify here. My experience on the pandemic vegetable patch has definitely revealed this truth, because most days on the farm I look down at myself at the day’s end, and I sincerely wonder where the dirt ends and where I begin.
Humans come from the dirt; humans return to the dirt; in between, humans survive on the produce of the dirt. Furthermore, anyone who works on a pilot vegetable patch in the summer of a global pandemic also digs the dirt, tromps around in the dirt, wears the dirt, quite possibly lies down in the dirt, inadvertently usually eats some dirt, and, to sum up, exists pretty much at one with the dirt.
But again, is this observation not what we already know from our origin story? The
This circle is one of being and of care. It is an interwoven, inextricable existence: God, humanity, and the ground. First, the ground is indispensable for God’s creative work. God depends on the ground, using it as a medium for God’s work, material shaped and breathed into life. Second, humans depend on the ground for their sustenance and livelihood. The ground is humanity’s source: for work, directly or indirectly, and for life, for its very existence. Without the dirt, humanity cannot live. Third, the ground depends on humans for its proper development. As humans cannot thrive without the dirt, neither can the dirt thrive without human care and effort. 4 God relies on the ground to shape life and relies on humankind to care for that life. Humankind relies on the ground for its food and on God for its sustenance. The ground relies on God for its creation and on humankind for its care. A three-way interconnection and interdependence.
The pandemic, however, challenged all understanding of connectedness. Closeness to one another became dangerous, and creating boundaries, barriers to that closeness, became the best way to express love and care for each other. This idea, put in such plain terms, sounds an absurd oxymoron. How can separation possibly be the best expression of closeness? Yet, when we understand our world, both the people in it and the spaces we inhabit, as interconnected, we can begin to accept the fundamental reality that my neighbor’s well-being (shalom in the Hebrew understanding) is my well-being and my well-being is my neighbor’s well-being.
In perceiving how everything is connected in God, woven together at its genesis by God, maybe the Christian community can begin to better understand and endure situations in which the call to care for all or some part of God’s creation requires such acts of perplexing, nearly unbearable sacrifice. We are from the dirt and, as such, we are as beautiful and also as fragile as that perfect tomato ripening on the vine. If we are willing to exhaust ourselves caring for that tomato through sweltering heat, pounding rain, bug-filled days, and pest-filled nights, how can we do any less in caring for our neighbor, for those other dirt-shaped, divine-breathed creations of the Almighty?
When enumerating the lessons, large and small, taught to me by Roma tomatoes, hot peppers, and the soil out of which they grew, one of the more personal lessons has been: you can have a doctorate in Hebrew Bible from an elite university and still be just about the most ignorant person in the proverbial room. I naively thought that growing vegetables was about water and sunlight and, I dunno, probably the plants. As it turns out, if I had been quicker to connect that Hebrew Bible I so diligently study with the ground on which I was standing, I would have remembered, as God remembers in Ps 103:14, that the cultivation of life began with God digging in the dirt, followed by a call from that God for all humankind to get its hands dirty as well, to dig deeply and to tend fully God’s creation, understanding that to love and serve creation is to love and serve God, one another, and even ourselves.
Lesson 2: The plants must become ugly before the fruit can become beautiful
For the first couple of months, the unbroken rows of perfectly green, lush tomato plants were beautiful. First, they were small and beautiful. Then they were a bit taller and beautiful. Then they were full of blossoms, and they were beautiful. Then they began to produce these tiny, perfect green tomatoes, and they were beautiful. But, after that, something else began happening. The plants began to grow brown and scraggly, and they continued to become more brown and more scraggly. Then, after a hurricane remnant rolled through central Virginia, a bunch of the plants gave up trying to stand and just fell over. The plants were not so beautiful anymore. To be honest, in my eyes, they had become pretty ugly.
As the wise farmers and gardeners among you already know, however, this description of the plants’ outward appearance is not the full picture. In this metamorphosis from green and lush to brown and scraggly, what was actually happening was that the leaves and stems were yielding their own beauty for the good of the fruit. As the plants became ugly, the tomatoes were becoming beautiful. And what beauties they were, all shades of red and orange, no two exactly the same, hanging thick and enticing on the now-decidedly brown, definitely ugly, plants.
To describe the vegetable patch in these terms of visual attractiveness, of aesthetics, of how the plants looked to my eyes, is to describe the patch as a work of art meant to be beautiful to behold. Yet, the scene that evolved over the months can be described another way. As each plant matured, it transferred its energy, its resources, its effort away from growing branches and leaves and into growing fruit. This process happened over a scientifically determined number of weeks and included attending to the proper preparation of the soil beforehand and the proper monitoring for pests and sufficient hydration during their growth cycle. With these plant requirements satisfied, the plant could be expected to produce X pounds of tomatoes per plant, and each tomato specimen would grow to the approximate size, shape, and hue of its particular variety.
The time to harvest the Romas eventually arrived. We put our heads down, and we worked hard, very hard. We worked as instructed, ruthlessly exiling to the compost pile any tomato that did not meet the necessarily high standard for storing and processing. We picked and culled and washed and sorted, all with precision and according to the process set down for us.
Then, every so often, someone would lift their head, look around, and observe of the surroundings, “Wow, this place sure is beautiful!” Every so often, someone would stop, hold up a near-perfect tomato and declare, “Wow, this tomato is beautiful.” We worked in cadences dictated by measurement, numbers, precision, and process, and we worked in rhythms carried by pause, reflection, admiration, and enjoyment.
Our leadership is blessed with two experienced agricultural and farming experts. One of them is spreadsheets and charts and drawings and equations and calculations. He pores over topographical maps and analyzes soil samples. He speaks the elemental language of the periodic table. If he has two tools with him, one will be a tape measure. The other keeps records with a pencil and a wire-bound notebook, all the pages wavy and crinkled from the water that has dribbled onto them over time. She supervises plantings largely by feel and uses a combination of coaxing and finessing to get the aged tractor to do her bidding. She knows every rise and fall of the land and, looking out over the farm, sees each year of the life she has shared with it.
These two gifted individuals are the dovetailing of the science and the art of farming. To tend God’s earth is to stand in deepest awe of the beauty of God’s art, to experience the full palate of the landscape and the arresting colors and shapes of the fruit. To tend God’s earth is also to dig deeply into the agricultural science to understand the processes necessary for the thriving of the crop and to nurture the plants to maturity gently and persistently according to those processes so they can bear fruit that will provide for humankind’s bodily needs.
Christians are fairly well attuned to appreciating the art, the beauty of the earth. Indeed, congregations and choirs regularly sing a hymn about it. But these two farmers working in tandem in this vegetable patch are a reminder that to tend God’s creation is also to appreciate the beauty of the science, that understanding the mechanisms and processes at work in the ripening of tomatoes is as deeply theological as standing in awe at the sight of a field full of the brilliantly red fruit.
Yet, Christians through the centuries have argued, sometimes to the death, over the place of science in theology and in the life of faith. This conflict continues to rage. Despite recognizing that the tomato on the vine is both a miracle of God’s handiwork and a convergence of countless scientific processes, some Christians are still insisting that the Bible is the only book necessary to understanding the complexity of creation. Despite affirming scriptural “truth” that all human life has a common source, Christians are still clashing fiercely over precisely which of those lives matter. Despite claiming to be obedient to God, some Christians are still dogmatically refuting compelling data that would enable humankind to better obey the command to serve and to preserve God’s good creation.
This ongoing discord reveals the extent to which people of faith have become disconnected from creation. Yet, in Rom 8:18-25, the focus is on the solidarity of humans and their world in both the present and the future. Paul could no more think of persons apart from their environment than he could conceive of them apart from their bodies.
5
Humanity does not exist apart from the created order. No human exists apart from other humans or from the world surrounding them. To argue otherwise is to deny the fullness and beauty of the intricately connected creation, an interconnectedness woven together not just in nature, but also in the nature of God.
The psalmist certainly does not allow for argument over God’s “creating” nature: The
In an act to be appreciated both aesthetically and botanically, a tomato plant yields one part of itself for another, as the plant’s transition to brown, scraggly vine enables the formation of nutritious, life-giving fruit. Neither the beauty of a plant, nor that of any human, resides in its transitory outward appearance. The material world is impermanent, the psalmist says. The faithful and steadfast love of God (hesed, חסד) is eternal. 6 As objects of such love, humankind is called to participate with God as co-makers of a righteous and just creation. In a cycle of life that manifests as both art and science, the abundance of beauty poured into us is the beauty we are to offer abundantly for the flourishing of others. God calls us to put the beauty of our being, dust and breath, into serving both the creator and the created, whether knee-deep in the dirt or shoulder-to-shoulder with our neighbor.
Lesson 3: Community is backs bent together over shared work for a common purpose
The first conversations about the formation of this entity included discussions of identity: who we were and who we were striving to be. We spoke in those discussions about denominational identity, how we “saw” the seminary, how we thought others might see it, and how we understood this community to be in relationship to others. In looking around our table, we had to honestly say that denominationally we were baptist. Our leadership group grew up in churches and served churches and attended churches and taught those who would serve churches. In the majority of instances, “churches” meant baptist churches.
Yet we also knew with conviction that, while the seminary would naturally reflect our collective baptist background, we did not want it to be limited by our collective baptist background. Our aspiration was and is to be open, to be inclusive, to value the difference that would certainly make us stronger when we came together.
The language, then, that we adopted for ourselves is captured in one of our core values: The community claims its heritage as little “b” baptist, understanding this heritage as historical, transcending specific denominational confines, and equally commits itself to ecumenical and interfaith work, locally and globally. Little “b” baptist is a concept borrowed from the late theologian James McClendon, who discusses baptists as having “distinguishing marks.” The following two such distinguishing marks are (1) understanding the Bible as authoritative for a life of faith lived in the world and (2) understanding the church as having freedom given solely by God, as expressed, for example, in the principle of the separation of church and state. 7 The articulation in this core value above is thus to hold together being little “b” baptist with a commitment to working in ecumenical and interfaith partnerships.
Fast forward several months from these initial conversations, and we were able to bring onto the board of trustees a recently retired Episcopal priest. Incredibly quickly he became, and remains, one of the community’s most zealous advocates, telling any and all about the endeavor with excitement and enthusiasm. When the call went out for volunteers to help on the pilot vegetable plot, he issued the call in his circles, and from week 1, a handful of those people responded, and, just like that, volunteer work days in the vegetable patch became a sort of bapto-palian coalition.
While our pilot vegetable plots featured Roma tomatoes primarily, a smaller plot was dedicated to cayenne and serrano peppers. Upon completion of the tomato harvest, the time arrived for the pepper harvest. The plan devised was to pull the pepper plants up completely, gather them in a central area known as The Grove, and pick/wash/sort the peppers in a single session.
So, there we are, our bapto-palian coalition all seated in a wide circle under a group of shade trees, our backs bent over the pepper plants and a few huge rinsing/sorting buckets. The scene looked like it could have been a grainy and faded sepia photograph from a great-grandparent’s photo album.
As we work, we chat away. I answer a barrage of questions about plans for the seminary and farm. A number of ordinated folk in the circle recount their stories of calls to ministry. Then the conversation gently meanders through various other topics. Eventually, the conversation turns to what was in front of us, namely the hot peppers. Someone mentions that we are still trying to choose a name for the hot sauce we would make from the peppers, a comment that sends us down a whole new line of conversation. One suggestion is “Jesus loves you, but this sauce is really hot.” Multiple options are floated relating to the sauce’s relative hotness in comparison to another infamously hot place (I am speaking, of course, of Florida). Dante’s Inferno gets a mention. 8 On and on the conversation continues as we labor away, trying to work through the enormous pile of hot pepper plants. At some point in this wandering conversation, one of our Episcopalians relates a particularly interesting and humorous story. Without warning, one of our baptist minister volunteers blurts out, disarmingly and simply, “I love Episcopalians. They are so much fun.”
True, this statement sounds somewhat cheesy repeated out of its original context, but this enthusiastic outburst captured the genuine camaraderie of that pepper-picking experience. And the honesty of the statement caused me to pause in the moment, look around the circle, and realize that we were there in that circle due, in no small part, to our Episcopalians. People who were strangers 2 months ago were now completely indispensable to the thriving of this young endeavor and its community.
Backs bent together over shared work for a common purpose always form community. Out in that pandemic vegetable patch, honoring a commitment to reaching beyond our known circles, those new relationships and the community formed through them helped give this endeavor new life.
Relationships and partnerships are not limited to the places where we expect them. Jesus’s whole life story, as the Gospels tell it, could be titled A Series of Unplanned Encounters and Unexpected Relationships with Unlikely People. When we open our lives to unknown possibility or, in the language of Rom 8, await in hope for what we cannot see, God can weave us together in wonderfully unexpected ways and fill the vegetable patch with the most lovely and wonderful Episcopalians.
Lesson 4: We will want things we cannot have, but the thing we get might be exactly the thing we need
In early conversations, our leadership imagined a number of positive aspects to the pandemic tomato and pepper pilot plots: we would learn lots; we could begin to farm now, so we did not, in the near future, have to get both a farm and a seminary up and running simultaneously; the farming would provide an opportunity to regain the momentum and inspiration that the pandemic had stifled; we could begin making some income through sale of the produce.
The question then arose of how to make the endeavor work. We were only six people at that time, so we would definitely require help. We will approach supportive church congregations and our trustees to see if we can find some folk who would be willing to come out early on the weekend to this unknown, untested project about a 50-minute drive from our base in Richmond (Virginia) and get hot and sweaty and filthy and bug-bitten and sunburned and sore. I mean, really, how could this plan not work?
Yet, a handful of people we asked said yes. The next time we asked, they again said yes. And they continued saying yes. Then they began saying strange things such as “this is fun” and “this is highlight of my week” and “when are we all getting out here again.” And one morning, I looked up and looked around. People were scattered here and there. They were hot and sweaty and filthy and bug-bitten and well on their way to being sunburned and sore. And they were smiling and laughing and enjoying themselves. This sudden feeling of hopefulness washed over me, a feeling that had been elusive during those long pandemic months. In our planning, the leadership imagined the pilot plots could achieve a number of things for our nascent endeavor. We had not been able to yet see the impact on us of that place and that experience and on the way it would knit us together as a community.
We certainly wanted many things we simply could not have. What we got was unexpected and hope-filled and life-giving. It was precisely what we needed. To be sure, this lesson is not one to be learned only during a global pandemic. Individuals and communities often confront this challenge, and these “things” for which we long but cannot have are often easy to name. The more difficult part comes in the challenge of Rom 8:24-25: to give up our yearning for what we can see and place our hope in what we cannot see.
Corrie and Betsie ten Boom were sisters in a Dutch family of Christians who, during the Second World War, hid Jewish people in a secret room in the family home above the family shop. The family’s actions were discovered, and they were arrested. Eventually, Corrie and Betsie were imprisoned in the Ravensbrück concentration camp about 50 miles north of Berlin. Corrie narrates the following incident in her memoir The Hiding Place.
A group of women including Corrie and Betsie have just been moved to a different barracks in the camp. The first night they discover that the sleeping quarters are infested with fleas. Betsie remembers a passage they had read that morning from their Bible, which they had managed to conceal throughout their imprisonment: “Give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thess 5:18). Betsie excitedly declares that this verse is the answer “for every single thing about this new barracks!” She urges Corrie to give thanks for their being assigned in the barracks together, for the Bible they had managed to keep in their possession, for the crowded conditions that meant more women could meet God in the Bible’s pages, and for the fleas. Corrie replies, “Betsie, there’s no way even God can make me grateful for a flea.” Betsie quotes the Thessalonians verse again with emphasis, “Give thanks in all circumstances.” “And so,” Corrie remembers, “we stood between piers of bunks and gave thanks for fleas. But this time I was sure Betsie was wrong.” 9
Over the next weeks and months, Corrie and Betsie hold Bible studies back in the barracks in the evenings. The meetings grow in size and frequency. All the while, one thing they can never understand is why no guard presence impedes them in holding their Bible studies. Then one evening, Corrie returns to a waiting Betsie who announces that she has discovered the reason.
That afternoon, she said, there had been confusion in her knitting group about sock sizes and they had asked the supervisor to come and settle it: “But she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t step through the door and neither would the guards. And you know why?” Betsie could not keep the triumph from her voice: “Because of the fleas! That’s what she said, ‘That place is crawling with fleas!’” My mind rush back to our first hour in this place. I remembered Betsie’s bowed head, remembered her thanks to God for creatures I could see no use for.
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Betsie had insisted on giving thanks for creatures Corrie could find no use for. Facing circumstances nearly unimaginable, Betsie, and a more reluctant Corrie, turned themselves and their prayers to a God they believed could and would be present in their midst in ways that were tangible, but were also beyond their present imagining. In being inspired to give thanks even for the fleas, Betsie had placed her hope in what she did not see.
The Rom 8 text attests that deep suffering can co-exist with unremitting hope. Not only humankind, but all creation, can be in the midst of an experience so excruciating that the only possible utterances are groans, and yet still look beyond the present crushing reality to a promised, but as-yet-unseen, redemption from that suffering. Furthermore, as Paul reckons it, the intensity of this present suffering recedes into insignificance when compared to the magnificence that is on its way (v. 18).
And so, in times of suffering and of hoping for the unseen, we wait. In Rom 8:23 and 25, the verb translated in the NRSV as “wait” (α’πεκδέχομαι, apekdechomai) has a particular sense, not of waiting passively, twiddling one’s thumbs, gazing off into the distance, mindlessly staring at one’s phone, but to wait with expectation, in a state of watchfulness and anticipation, to be on the lookout, to await.
My little nephew is taken with anything that has a motor, from a toy car to a garage door opener to a delivery van to a backhoe. When he hears even the faintest sound of something that could prove interesting, he goes tearing off to find a spot where he can vigilantly watch the street. He is completely certain that something amazing is coming his way, and he puts himself in the best position possible to meet that amazing thing. Often, as he is tearing off, the rest of us are left asking him, “What is it?” He has heard something we have not. A prosaic truth is that his young hearing is probably better than ours. What is more deeply true, however, is that he hears these faintest of rumblings because he has been expecting to hear them all along.
Like my nephew, who is certain that something awesome is already on its way, Christians are enjoined in Rom 8 to wait—not passively, not in despair, but in expectation for what we do not yet see, for what we cannot yet have. I know I have never given thanks for a flea, either literal or metaphorical. Yet, Betsie ten Boom’s faith required her to give thanks even for the fleas. Betsie had an expectation; she was, in all circumstances, awaiting something she could not see.
All creation groaned under the weight of the pandemic. It revealed in newly painful ways the elusive nature of hope and the challenge of imagining how restoration can emerge from a present, pressing, and seemingly impossible situation. An inevitability of life is living through times of longing for what we cannot have. And yet, woven through the words of Rom 8:18-25 of how painfully full of groans life can be is a persistent thread of hope, hope in God’s liberation and redemption. God, who in Christ brought life from death, calls forth new life from out of the struggle and the longing. And for those who suffer, the means of liberation is not constrained by the scope of their limited vision. Quite the opposite, our deepest hope should reside in a coming revelation of what we have not yet been able to glimpse. All creation awaits with unrelenting hope, forever persisting and forever expecting a coming revelation of God’s salvation.
Conclusion
Standing in the pandemic vegetable patch, I learned many lessons about farming the land and about growing tomatoes and hot peppers. The most significant lessons, however, taught me about God’s good creation, about our young community of faith, about who we are and who we desire to be, and about our life and witness as those pulled forth from the dust of the ground, animated by our creator, and sent forth to serve the creator and to preserve the created.
Footnotes
1.
This article began as a July 2021 sermon series for a Baptist congregation in central Virginia. The sermon texts were Ps 103 and Rom 8:18-25.
2.
In this context, CSA is an abbreviation for Community Supported Agriculture. In a CSA, people pre-purchase a share of a local farm’s produce. The subscriptions fund the costs of farming. Then, as the produce is harvested, the shareholders receive a regular, usually weekly, portion of the produce. This partnership between a farm and its local community is one of shared costs and shared returns. For information and links to resources, see “Community Supported Agriculture,” USDA National Agriculture Library, 
.
3.
The eight terms are compost, cover crops, drip irrigation, no-till, nutrient management, organic matter, soil health, and soil structure. The two closely related terms are cultural control methods and organic production. The 11th term is community supported agriculture. See “Glossary,” Sophia Farms, .
4.
5.
Charles H. Talbert, Romans, SHBC (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2002), 213–14.
6.
For discussion on the use of hesed (חסד) in Ps 103, see Nancy L. deClaissé-Walford, Rolf A. Jacobson, and Beth LaNeel Tanner, The Book of Psalms, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 759–68.
7.
James W. McClendon, Jr., Ethics: Systematic Theology, vol. 1, 2nd ed. (Nashville: Abingdon, 2002), 26–34. The five “distinguishing marks” are biblicism, liberty, discipleship, community, and mission. McClendon discusses each of the five en route to his postulation of “the baptist vision,” a unifying description of little “b” baptists, which is in “motto” form: “The church now is the primitive church and the church on judgment day” (p. 30). See also James W. McClendon, Doctrine: Systematic Theology, vol. 2 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), 44–46.
8.
The sauce was eventually named Use Wisely Hot Sauce. Sophia (σοφία) translates from Greek as “wisdom,” thus the sauce name is a serious instruction delivered with a humorous wink.
9.
Corrie ten Boom with John and Elizabeth Sherrill, The Hiding Place (New York: Bantam, 1971), 198–99.
10.
ten Boom, Hiding Place, 208–209.