Psalms 28:14
Living Bible: Don’t be impatient. Wait for the Lord, and he will come and save you. Be brave, stouthearted and courageous. Yes, wait and he will help you.
Green apples and patience
On the dairy farm in norther Wisconsin where I grew up, my father had planted eight apple trees. In the center of the old yard my Grandfather had planted an apple tree when they homesteaded this 160 acres. They bought this land after the big logging companies had harvested all the big pines and moved on west. Individuals who wanted to clear the big pine stumps and brush off the land; could buy a quarter section of land to start farming on. This old apple tree taught me some valuable lessons about life.
My brother and I used to like to eat apples off the trees. The young apple trees that my dad planted, bore a lot of apples but they ripened later in the fall. The old tree in the center of the yard had big apples that ripened sooner. We would throw the football up to knock off a ripe looking apple. We often tried this before the apples were fully ripe. Mom and Dad would say, “now just wait until they are fully ripe and they will taste so much better”. That was not an option with us and we would try to get the apples as soon as they even looked close to ripe. Often they would be sour but we ate them anyway and sometimes got a little sick to our stomach. They were marvelous in apple pies and my Mom could make the best. She would always tell us to pick up the windfalls and she would make apple pies out of this world with them
How often in life we want God to bring something about in our lives. We have so much trouble waiting for his perfect timing and often get tired of the silence and go on ahead of him.. Then when things don’t work out and we cry out to God, what went wrong. Why am I in this mess, God replies, you wouldn’t wait for me and now you are suffering the consequences. God can, and often does straighten things out for us but we often carry the scars of making our own choices when it seemed that God was silent and we just had to move on with out him.
One of the hardest lesson in life is to wait on God for his perfect timing. He is never early! But he is also never late, He is always just on time. Like eating a apple before it is ripe, we often miss some of the sweetest things that life and God have to offer; with our failure to wait on him. Look to God and be willing to wait on him and enjoy the sweetest apple of life that you ever had. When God finally works his will in our lives and we surrender all to him, we are ready to be picked, right at our very best of flavor and usefulness to Him.
