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| Kari Farnell |
Spring! If you are like me, you get excited when you see the purple and white crocuses start peaking through the ground. To me, it means Spring is right around the corner. Thoughts of Spring also remind me of peach trees. My family has grown and harvested peaches in some form or fashion since 1985 or so. Every year, usually in March, the buds begin and soon there are delicate pink blossoms all over the trees promising great-tasting fruit in a few months. It occurred to me that living a Christian life is a lot like the life of a peach tree.
1. Peach trees, as do many trees, require pruning. Pruning is cutting back overgrowth or bad limbs to create better growth. When peach trees are first planted, they are often pruned almost down to nothing. It appears that they will be useless and die, but the next thing you know, branches begin to take off from the trunk and within a few years time, those branches bear fruit. Every year, the trees go through a |
| Kari Farnell |
period of pruning and every year after looking at the "carnage" of limbs and branches, the thought passes that these trees will be of no use, but every year that pruning benefits the trees and wonderful fruit is produced. In the Christian life, we often encounter pruning. Our bad habits and sinfulness must be pruned so that we can produce better fruit. Sometimes it may seem that an awful lot is being pruned away, but it will be beneficial in the end.
John 15:2 says, "My Father examines every branch in Me and cuts away those who do not bear fruit. He leaves those bearing fruit and carefully prunes them so that they will bear more fruit"
2. Similar to pruning is something called thinning. This occurs after the blossoms have turned to fruit and the fruit has started to grow. I'm sure each farmer is different, but in my family the process has been to take baseball bats out to the orchard and hit the tree branches. Not hard enough to hit a home run, but hard enough to knock some of the baby peaches off. Some folks may question this process as well. Why would we want to knock some of the fruit off? Isn't the idea: the more the better? No, not in this case. If the farmer lessens the amount of baby peaches on the tree, the remaining peaches will grow larger and stronger. They are able to gather more of the tree's nutrients because it is being shared by fewer fruits. This process also knocks off bad fruit or fruit that won't last. In our Christian lives, our bad habits and sinfulness must be thinned out, so that our good habits and Godliness can gain more nutrients and thrive. The less "bad" fruit on our tree, the "good" fruit can grow bigger and stronger and our trees can be "good" trees.
Matthew 7:17 says, "Good trees bear beautiful, tasty fruit, but bad trees bear ugly, bitter fruit."
3. A couple other little known facts about peaches is that they can rot quickly if left in a paper bag too long and too much water is a bad thing. Peaches ripen VERY quickly in a paper bag. Although my family sells their peaches in paper bags, they encourage customers to remove them quickly as keeping  |
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them in a paper bag builds up gasses that cause the peaches to go from firm to rotten within a day. It's good if you want to ripen 1 or 2 quickly but not the whole bagful. Additionally, too much water is bad for peaches. Most people like to water their plants and trees and for most trees it's a great thing, but for peach trees, too much water causes the fruit to lose its taste. The fruit becomes waterlogged and loses much of its sweetness. In our Christian lives, too much of the world or being cloaked by the world as in a paper bag, is harmful to us. By the world I mean the sins in the world and the things that are not Biblical and things that God would not approve of. If we have too many of those things in our lives, the "sweetness" of our Christian lives cannot be noticed or may even rot away.
1 John 2:16 says, "All the things the world can offer to you—the allure of pleasure, the passion to have things, and the pompous sense of superiority—do not come from the Father. These are the rotten fruits of this world.
4. There are many different varieties of peaches that vary slightly in use, taste, texture, etc. Most of these trees have been produced by grafting different "parental" varieties together. What is interesting is that because of this grafting, if you plant a peach pit in the ground and it grows into a tree, it likely will not produce the same variety of peach that the pit came from. Sometimes the tree itself doesn't really bear fruit or doesn't bear good fruit. Just like these trees, our Christian lives are not based on our parents' lives.
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| Kari Farnell |
Just because parents in a family might be Christians or Godly people, this does not automatically translate to the children. All family members must make their own decisions about Christ, Christianity, and things of the church. There is no osmosis in being a Christian. YOU must decide where YOU are going to be rooted.
Joshua 24:15 says, "But if you don’t want to worship the Lord, then choose right now! Will you worship the same idols your ancestors did? Or since you’re living on land that once belonged to the Amorites, maybe you’ll worship their gods. I won’t. My family and I are going to worship and obey the Lord!
5. As mentioned earlier, one of the great things about peach trees and Spring is the beautiful blossoms that come out at this time of year. It is always so pretty and encouraging. Of course, not every blossom will produce fruit. Some will die off, some will be thinned off as baby peaches or some other occurrence will destroy them. I had a few trees in my yard that produced beautiful and sweet-smelling blossoms, but when it was time for the fruits to develop, not a single fruit could be found on the trees.
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| Kari Farnell |
As Christians, we should produce good fruits, or good blossoms. Some may call it good worKs. An important thing to remember is that our blossoms, or works, should not be merely outward appearances. Our blossoms should produce fruit and should be based in our faith. Without our faith, our blossoms do not produce the desired fruits. People can see beyond the "pretty" outward appearance. Another important concept is the realization that we are not saved from Hell by our works or blossoms. We are only saved by our belief in Jesus' sacrifice for us. It doesn't matter how many beautiful blossoms we produce. If we are not rooted in faith and belief in Jesus, we are still doomed to suffer and be separated from the tree.
James 2:20 says, "The fact is, faith has to show itself through works performed in faith. If you don’t recognize that, then you’re an empty soul."
Ephesians 2:8-9 says, "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not a result of works, so that no one may boast."
Just as peach trees need full sunlight to thrive, prosper, and produce delicious peaches, we need "Sonlight" to thrive, prosper, and produce our fruits. The good news is that sunlight and Sonlight are free. It doesn't cost us anything. All we have to do to gather Sonlight is to accept the invitation that God has extended to us. We just need to tell Him that we know the sacrifice He made on the cross for us and that we are ready to accept His light today.
