Low-Hanging Fruit

After church today I hung some clothes on the line, let the chickens run around the backyard, and picked a gallon of figs. It was a hot day, but it was nice in the shade with the breeze. There was that country feel to the day.

My mind usually wanders when I work like that. As I was picking the figs, I was reminded of the phrase “low-hanging fruit” that is sometimes applied when people travel to remote and desperate areas to spread the gospel. Those people they are trying to save are the low-hanging fruit: easy to reach.

I got some low-lying fruit today. I also got some I had to reach up for. I even got some I had to climb on the kids' fort and reach over, pull the branch over to me, and then pick it. When I went and sat across the yard in my comfy lawn chair, darned if I didn't see some fruit that was ripe for the picking that I didn't get in the first pass. Should I just sit there and leave it for the birds? Should I get up, put forth a little more effort, and go get that other fruit? Of course, you know what I did. I couldn't sit there knowing there was fruit to be picked.

Would that I was so diligent in picking the fruit in the Lord's garden, low-hanging or not. All my fruit got put in the same bucket. It will all be washed. It will all be preserved. I won't be able to tell the fruit from the bottom branches from the fruit off the top. God's people are like that. No matter where they come from, they are all valuable and worth the effort. They will all be washed. They will all be preserved.

Lord, help me to find all the fruit you want me to pick. Help me put forth the effort for the hard to reach fruit.

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener” John 15:1

“When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.” Matthew 21:34