When I was growing up, my grandma’s house had an orchard out in front of it. The orchard was full of apple trees, pear trees, peach trees and cherry trees. It was a always a sweet, green spot in the heat of the golden wheat fields of southwestern Oklahoma.
The trees in the orchard were hard to predict. Some years were better than others, and some fruits always produced better than others. There were always copious amounts of apples, and there were hardly ever more than a hand-full of peaches. But the peaches were my favorite. It was probably because they were the rarest and the juiciest. There are few things better than biting into a cool, juicy, fresh peach after mowing the yard on a 100 degree day.
I started thinking about my grandma’s orchard this morning because I was reading about spiritual fruit in the book of Galatians. There’s a passage of text that lists all of the good fruit and a passage of text that lists all the bad fruit. For some reason, the bad fruit always feels like the apples in my life - like there’s a lot of it. While the good fruit feels more like the peaches - rarer to see, but much sweeter.
I think we’re always hyper-critical of ourselves, and we typically see the worst in us, verse the best parts. That’s good at times, but this morning while I was reading and thinking about fruit, I felt like i should look for more good fruit in my life. It’s harder to see, but there’s bound to be plenty of it because God is good, and He gives us peaches, even when it seems like we’re standing in a forest of apples.
-Cliff
Cliff’s Note: Pursue the good fruits.