MY FRUITFUL EXPERIENCE

I really love fruits. Some of my favorite fruits are oranges, pineapples, mangos, strawberries and cantaloupes. I really enjoy kiwis and watermelon. One of my absolute favorite fruits is an apple. Apples come in a variety of ways. Some are green. I like those too. There are the Granny apples that have a little bit of sourness but just enough sweetness to balance it out. There are golden delicious apples. These have a softer outside but still deliciously sweet inside.

Yesterday, I went into the refrigerator and grabbed a beautiful red apple. It wasn’t huge. It was actually kind of small. I bit into this piece of red yummy goodness and tasted how sweet it was. It was a perfect balance of sweetness with a juicy white center on the inside and a crispy red skin on the outside. The taste was wonderful.  

Now, I know what you’re saying. “Marcus, why in the world would you waste my time to talk about fruits, trees and seeds?” Well, just to be very clear, I am really talking about you. Think of yourself as a fruit for a moment. As I share earlier, there are many, many different kinds of fruits just like there are many different kinds of people. Each person looks different and tastes different. Some people would be more like a cantaloupe (hard and scaly shell but smooth and sweet goodness on the inside). Some are like pineapples. Spiked, hard and complex on the outside and juicy, soft and sweeter than sweet on the inside. But that’s not the good part of what I wanted to share.

As I was eating that apple yesterday, I began having so many aha’s that my aha’s became aha’s. Time will not permit me to share them all. But here are the one’s that stand out to me the most. Here is the first one. I finished that small but delicious apple and I reached back in the fridge and decided that I needed another one. As I reached in and pulled out the next one, I noticed this one, had a little brown spot on it. There are times when we take a look at ourselves and realize we have some small rotten spots in us. It’s hard to deal with sometimes because if you don’t take a look, you won’t see it, but everyone else will. And there are some people in your life who have been like worms that have crawled through you and made little holes in you. You do know that an apple lasts longer when it hasn’t been pierced through the skin yet? All apples begin to rot at some point but it happens faster when the inside has been exposed. What have you been exposed to that is making or has made you rotten? What worms have you allowed to get under your skin and crawled out and have caused some rotting?

Aha number 2. I grabbed a knife and carefully cut the tiny brown spot off making sure that I cut beneath the surface so I could get the little bit of the brown away from the rest of the greatest invention ever. You are God’s greatest invention. Yes you. You might not think you matter, but God does. So he will take his knife of the word and cut away the rotten spots so it doesn’t cause the rest of your sweetness to be affected. He removes the worms so that there is no more digging through you.

Aha number three is the most powerful thought of them all, in my opinion. I began to think about the sweetness of this apple and how it originated. Apples are not a food that requires you to mix it with other ingredients. Nor do they need any seasoning or flavoring. It’s not something you have to cook or stir or even boil to create. You simply take the seeds from it and plant those seeds into the earth and water it. It will eventually grow a tree that will grow more delicious apples.

As I was enjoying the apple yesterday, I said out loud, “How did something this sweet and delicious grow from the dirt?” When we think of dirt, we think of negativity and messy stuff. That is true. Dirt can be nasty and filthy. It is not meant to be eaten. It is really not good for you to eat on it’s own. But dirt has many essential elements that are necessary to help things grow. Dirt is made up of a bunch of stuff mixed together like rocks, sand, clay and organic matter. None of which is good to eat, but the things that grow from it are.

You matter to someone. Your life can be better than what it is if you allow it to grow in good soil. The more elements that are in the soil, the more growth that will come out of it.

Mary, Mary has a song on their album called The Sound that goes like this:

“Funny thing about a garden, beauty lives within its gates
Bugs and thorns and weeds, they grow there

But they all help to create,

Vivid color variations, sweet aromas and sensations
Realize under it all, something not so beautiful
But we all ...”

“Need a little bit, need a little bit, need a little bit of dirt to grow
We need a little bit, need a little bit
Need a little rain to wash our souls
We need a little bit, need a little dirt to grow”

Remember the worms I mentioned in the beginning. You do know that worms live in the dirt, right? And they are also helping you grow. Some apples get worms in them and some don’t. It’s okay. But one thing is for sure. Everybody gets rotten sometimes. We just need our God to cut away at us sometimes so we can get those rotten places out of us. When he cuts away at us, unlike the apple, God will replace those rotten places with a fresh sweet part that fits like a missing puzzle piece.