Harvesting

It’s harvest time and the peaches, Italian prunes, and pears are weighing down the branches of my trees. One of my favorite things about autumn is to walk out my door, pick a peach and eat it right off the tree. It doesn’t get better than that. But the last two years we have been gone most of the summer and the trees haven’t gotten cared for as they should so that the peaches have had more pests gnawing at them than usual. When I cut out the bad spots they still taste good, but looking at them they aren’t as appealing.


This has made me think about the many scriptural verses that talk about the “fruits of our labors” (Alma 26:31), “by their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:16), and bringing forth “fruit meet for repentance” (Alma 12:15). All of these references to metaphorical fruit also indicate that growing “spiritual fruits” requires care and nurturing. We have to “spray for pests” and water and fertilize and in other ways tend to our spiritual lives or the fruit is not appealing. If we get too busy or too lazy to tend to spiritual things our “fruits” will not be good.

So as I’m cutting bad spots out of my peaches this year, I’m thinking about the “bad spots” that need to be cut out of my life. That may sound discouraging, but it is not. I want my life to be as beautiful and flawless as possible. Especially I want it bug free!