Apples

My God thoughts for this day...  Now before I tell you my God thoughts you must remember I am a simple girl with simple thoughts :)  My main reason for putting these moments down in writing is for my grandchildren, and perhaps even great grandchildren to read. Also I like the process of writing. It makes simple things a bit clearer and I get to walk a bit deeper in shallow water as a friend once put it.  Today I began one of my least favorite jobs. It isn't a job that requires much physical labor like fencing or digging a new garden bed, and it isn't one that makes me dirty and nasty smelling. That would be cleaning the pond, dirtiest job ever.  No, this job is easy by comparison, and yet it is one that I always dislike to do. Today I thinned the apples on the apple trees. It feels so counter productive,  like I am cutting my harvest in half, yet I know this seasonal job is one of the most important things I can do to increase my apple harvest. Funny how things aren't always what they seem. I have skipped the thinning in past years, the tree yielded an abundant crop of tiny little apples that were tasty but very difficult to peel and cut up.  Not really something anyone would delight to have. The tree just does not have enough energy to yield the large fruit when it is trying to produce so many apples. So I thin...  The first tree was wisely already assessing the number of fruit it had set and the amount it was able to support until ripe, so it had begun the thinning process itself. It was easy to strip off those tiny apples that had already been selected by the tree to be dropped. The bigger apples that I stripped off were harder for me. There was nothing wrong with them, there were just too many if I wanted to harvest large beautiful apples. The next tree was a bit different, it was holding on to every piece of fruit it had set, from the larger ones to the very tiny, it was not letting go of anything. The harvest from this tree would have been very disappointing had I not pruned the fruit. A harvest of medium mixed with teeny tiny green fruit not even able to ripen before the first frost. Useless.  When I thought of these two trees I thought about our goals, both the trees and I have the same goal; produce fruit, abundant, good fruit. As the gardener I get to decide what this fruit looks like, the tree just wants to make as many apples as possible, I however desire quality over quantity.  As I was pruning away I thought how God has called me to produce fruit. I wondered how I was doing in this department, when I look back on this season of my life, will it be fruitful? When I come to the end of my time all I really want is to have made a difference in the lives of those I love. I think that is true for us all. As I was working on that second tree God whispered to my heart,  you are like this tree, you hold on to everything, even things that will never ripen, and your fruit is less because of this. Wow. I do not like to have my life stripped of stuff. I like all my stuff, and to think of letting go of somethings is distressing to me. But at the same time, I am always so busy, and I feel that I am often spread way too thin. I just don't have the energy to do it all. I need to be thinned. Ok God... The thought came then of how will God do this, how will He know what to keep and what to take away? Dear child let me tell you of the goodness of God.  When I thin the fruit I do so with thought, picking off the small and scared fruit first, but there comes a time when it just becomes random, how do you choose which one to keep and which to discard when they both appear the same? God does not work this way. His knowledge is infinite, perfect and complete. As the gardener He knows what fruit he wants us to produce, or are even able to produce. He knows where to thin and where to support. He will never harm his beloved.  His desire is the same as ours, to have His love perfected in us, to see us bear fruit, abundant fruit, good fruit. I am not afraid of the gardener coming to prune me, and I eagerly anticipate a great harvest in this season of my life.  What are your God thoughts today?