The first handful of blueberries you pop into your mouth. A juicy melon that makes your taste buds dance. The sound of biting into the perfect ear of corn…crunch. All winter we look forward to these days. As we walk the sad and bare aisle of the produce section we long for the fresh taste of summer. There is nothing quite like the summer harvest.
My daughter and I went blueberry picking today. Her little hands were stained blue by the time we left. A blue beard also formed around her pink lips to match her hands. Her voice squealed through the blueberry bushes as she sang for “more, more, more please!”
While we picked from bush to bush I soon saw a sweet lesson. Many of the berries looked perfect from the top. Beautiful blue color. The kind that is sweet and plump. However, upon picking them occasionally there were ones that had red bottoms. The kind that is sour and not quite ripe.
How often do our lives look beautiful to the many observing us? How often do we only show our beautiful sweet blue and hide the sour red?
Are we ripening under the Son or being picked as yet sour? Are we portraying something unrealistic?
These are difficult questions. Only a heart tuned into God and His Word can answer. Take some time today, maybe even the next few days and let God examine the fruit on your tree. Let Him determine the flavor, the color. Sweet and blue or sour and red.
Psalm 139:23-24 Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting! ESV
Matthew 12:33 “Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit.” NIV
Luke 6:43-44 “A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit. A tree is identified by its fruit. Figs are never gathered from thornbushes, and grapes are not picked from bramble bushes.” NLT
Galatians 5:22-26 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. NKJV
Love the phrase, “Son ripened fruit”. It takes so much to produce good spiritual fruit. Fertile hearts that are open and humble, water from God’s Word and the example of Jesus shining His Light on our path. Thanks, Melissa, for all your gentle reminders.