A PIECE OF MY HEART ... picking a good apple

When our boys were younger, we lived in Wisconsin and one of our most favorite fall family outings was to go to a local apple orchard. I don't know if you have ever had the opportunity to visit a apple orchard to pick apples, but it was always an adventure for us to do it with 3 small boys.

(Our son Jordan picking apples 17 years ago!)

As you walked down lanes and lanes of apple trees, you just had to stop and begin looking over the fruit selection. Once you found a good picking area, we would let the boys go freely to pick as many apples as they could. The goal was to climb up the small ladder to the tree where the "good" apples were, but it never failed, one of the boys was always insistent on picking the apples from the ground.

Funny thing about an apple orchard...just because the apple has fallen from the tree, does not mean that the apple is rotten. In fact, sometimes it is quite difficult to tell the "good" apples from the "bad" apples. Most of the time I could not separate between the two until we got the apples home, and I began to cut into them to make an apple pie or homemade applesauce.

Once I sliced into the apple, the value of what was inside was revealed quickly. Oh my ... if only we could grasp this concept as christian men and women. We often times put on the "church clothes" and we walk the walk and talk the talk, but if we could examine the inside of our fruit - I wonder what we would find?

Sometimes we tend to place too much value on what the outerman sees and we forget that in the end what matters is the value of what is on the inside of our spiritual man. Our heart that is. We must guard our heart so that it will not "fall" from the tree, God's Grace that is. God warns us to not fall for the enemies schemes and deceipt.

1 JOHN 3:7a "Little children, let no one decieve you."

Next time you bite into an apple...remember that we are "fruit inspectors" and it is our job to be wary of the "bad" apples. Distinguishing the good from the bad may not be as easy as it sounds, but with God's leading and direction, I am confident that we can all be good apple pickers!

And that is a piece of my heart today!