Faith for the Journey: Cherries

This experience occurred on July 5, 2018. I wrote it down a few days later.

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The neighborhood in which I live has a pool at the center of it, and around the pool there are different kinds of fruit trees that have been planted.

About a week ago while walking the dogs I noticed that the cherry trees were bearing fruit, and I picked a few to eat as we walked by. The cherries were bitter tasting, not ones you’d want to go and pick more of.

Later that night, out of curiosity, I consulted google about bitter cherries. To my surprise, I found that there are several varieties of sour cherries, and that the cherry trees in our neighborhood were indeed of the sour variety.

I then did what any other food loving person would do: I researched how one could bake with sour cherries.

I found a few great recipes, but one stuck out. I had found a recipe for a sour cherry clafoutis, which is kind of like a fruity quiche/custard. I told my husband that the next day we needed to go and pick a bunch of cherries. We noticed that there were a bunch of cherries that weren’t ripe yet, but would be ripe after several days.

We came back with about 5 pounds of cherries and I made the sour cherry clafoutis, and it was amazing!

Knowing that there would be more cherries that would ripen, I waited several days to go back.

As I approached the trees for my second round of picking, I noticed how heavy the branches were with fruit, and how the bright red cherries contrast so nicely with the dark green leaves.

I thought to myself ‘Oh, to bear spiritual fruit like that!’

What would it be like to abide in Jesus so deeply, that spiritual fruit would hang in glorious abundance?

As I picked, there were other thoughts:

‘look how plentifully He provides!’

‘I have so many cherries, what will I do with them all?’

‘There are so many more cherries I’m not picking….I’ll have to come back another day to pick more’

‘With such a bountiful harvest, wouldn’t it be great to share with others instead of hoarding all these cherries for myself? Will they not create more joy when shared vs stored in my freezer?’

I returned home with all the cherries I could carry.

The fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

At the time, I was in the middle of a health crisis and couldn’t fathom how one could experience all the fruits of the spirit when you are experiencing trials. Specifically joy. James talks about rejoicing when you experience trials of any kind, but I had no idea how to do that.

I wasn’t sure I even really understood what Joy was in the Christian sense, so I googled it. I ended up finding a short, 6 part series by John Piper where he defines joy, and talks about other facets of joy, including thoughts about joy in suffering.

The videos gave me a new way to view the trial that I was in, and that helped me to be receptive to future teachings that would experience.