Sunday, August 2, 2020

A Lesson From the Berry Patch

One of my favorite things about summer is the bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables we get to enjoy. I don’t have a big garden, but I grow a few things, and one of my favorite challenges is to see if I can eat each day something I grew myself. Sometimes I substitute something I harvested myself from someone else’s vines or bushes.

This year, I’ve had the privilege of picking lots of berries. I went with some family members to pick blueberries and got to pick alongside my five-year-old granddaughter. “Just give the berry a little twist,” I said to Wren. “If it comes loose, it’s ready. If it doesn’t, don’t tug.” We set out to fill our buckets, and I went on to tell her, “The best berries are the ones that just drop into your hand when you touch them. They are the sweetest.”

Wren kept waiting for a berry to drop into her hand, but I don’t think it happened. Here’s what happened to me, though. Holding the bucket with one hand, I picked with the other, usually picking several berries before dropping them into the container. And those berries that were ripe enough and sweet enough to just fall into my hand? Sadly, I often had my hand too full of inferior berries to be ready to catch them. What a shame! I thought, watching the juiciest, sweetest prizes fall into the deep grass. Sometimes I could stir around in the grass and find these treasures; most of the time, they were lost.

Later, at home, I picked blackberries from the thicket behind my house and experienced the same pangs of disappointment watching perhaps the best wild blackberry of the day disappear into the underbrush. The little tinkling bell of a lesson became a distinct clang, and I knew this was what I would share with you. By now, you are no doubt sensing the very lesson that God handed to me this summer: It is possible to fill our hands with so much good stuff that we can’t grasp the best.

By “hands” here, I mean time, energy, headspace. I can fill my mind with so many novels, movies, jokes, songs—not bad stuff, but not the best—that I don’t have time or room to think of the very best. The precious hours of each day can be so full of cleaning out closets, perusing facebook, checking the tomato vines one more time—all wonderful pursuits that can also yield valuable results—that I run out of time to study God’s word and sit at His feet.

The story of Mary and Martha comes to mind. Jesus never said that Martha was being wicked; He just said that Mary had chosen the better thing, the thing that would bring her peace instead of frustration.  The psalmist implored, “Teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom” (Ps. 90:12).

In addition to actual prayer and Bible reading, perhaps there are other valuable things God is speaking to you about. Finding time to call a friend or write a letter.  Helping out with a project at church or in the community (as much as possible in these strange days!). God made each of us different, and no doubt He has a plan for you and for me that will fill our buckets with the very best. I’m not suggesting that we give up all our interests and pursuits, but I pray that we listen to the Holy Spirit and be obedient. Your sweetness might not look like mine, so I promise not to judge.

I’m just asking myself, What do I need to loosen my grip on so I can be ready to grab something better?

--Sherry Poff


No comments:

Post a Comment