THE APPLE TREE

PRACTICE: Introspection time – what is weighing you down?

The next-door neighbors planted three fruit trees shortly after moving in several years ago. I assumed they were ornamental but was wrong. Last year the peach tree was loaded with fruit, but a blight came mid-summer and the unripe fruit quickly dried up and dropped to the ground as did the leaves -no eatable fruit. This season the apple trees were so laden with apples, that they seemed incapable of withstanding their weight. Birds, worms, and other creatures great and small obviously thought the fruit was specifically ordered for them because they attacked them vigorously. I didn’t see a single apple that wasn’t infected – once again, no eatable fruit. Each day the infested fruit continued to grow, and the tree limbs drooped increasingly under their weight. It was not a pretty sight.

Then one night, a fierce summer rainstorm accompanied by high wind, thunder and lightning uprooted one of the trees. As the fallen apple tree laid on its side, one could easily understand the challenge that the tree faced, the roots were remarkably close to the surface of the earth. The weight of the bad fruit was almost too much under the most favorable conditions and it toppled when things got rough.

As I watched my elderly neighbors work diligently to save the fallen tree, I instinctively wanted to offer help but my offers in the past had been rebuffed. I dismissed the thought and concentrated on the tree.

The tree had done what it was designed to do, bloom, and produce apples – unfortunately, all bad apples. From a distance one would not have known how bad they were, but I was up close and personal. I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened in the storm had the owners been attentive to the fruit – picked bad apples immediately – and discarded them to lighten the load and decrease the birds and worms’ entry points. The remaining tree continued to stand dropping its pest-ridden fruit in both yards. No eatable apples were ever spotted.

The laden apple trees are like me and us. We are planted, we grow, we blossom, and we can produce a lot of fruit, some good and some rotten to the core. I may believe that my roots are deep. Are they deep enough? The struggles and joys of life are often a litmus test. Am I too heavy? Are my roots too close to the surface? When the answer to these is “yes,” I meet the same fate of the fallen apple tree -on the ground, wiped out- waiting to be saved by the force of unfailing love.

Hebrews 12:1

PONDER THIS THOUGHT—Shedding unhealthy habits and attitudes is a form of self-preservation.