Berry Picking

  

It’s my favorite time of the year—Blueberry season.  Picking berries is one of the few physical activities I enjoy. Blueberries are my fav!  I’ll eat them fresh, frozen, mixed and baked.

 

I go alone most often.  You might think it’s a quiet activity with time to reflect and meditate.  Not really.  Lots of other people are picking.  I overhear snatches of discussion on physical ailments, relationship issues and parents instructing kids on harvesting and behaving!

 

Today I did consider blueberry picking as a metaphor for living life.  Some folks search the field for the very best bush and patiently pick every single ripe berry.  A woman the row next to me spend an hour on one bush.

 

Some folks use the casual method.  (I think I’m one of them.) I choose a row with as few people as possible, walk past the first couple bushes and stop to evaluate the number of ripe berries.  When I tire of a bush, not that I’ve harvested every ripe morsel, I move to another or walk to the other side.

 

Then there is the chaos method.  No rhyme or reason to the bush selection.  I don’t think these people last long at picking because the reward is so delayed.

 

Berry picking requires discernment, gentleness and patience.  The ripe berries often are nested among other unripe berries.  To discover them you need to bend over and look up under the leaves.  The berries are small and to pick my usual 3.93 pounds, takes time (for me about 1.50 hours).

 

Berry picking might give me some advice on living life.  I like to think that I have control and select the path of my life.  But do I?  Just because I chose Patch #1, I can’t expect or command the berries to be ripe and visible.  The woman who chose just one bush and worked it for 1.50 hours didn’t harvest more berries than I, who visited at least 10 bushes, crawled on the ground and sat in the dirt looking up.

 

We can’t control life.  The morning session was punctuated with at least two squawking birds, a cooing dove, buzzing insect or two and a loud cricket or frog.  The birds expressed their disapproval of the humans gleaning their field.  I imagine Mama bird thought she’d built the nest in a prime location near a great food source.  Now she discovers the invasion of pesky humans stealing the freshest and best.

 

Our lives are like the berry patch.  Try our best to select and plan, then some random event or person disrupts our best laid plans.

 

In James 4:14 Life is described as “a mist.”  It’s hard to hold a mist, to plan for a mist or to use a mist.  It reminds me that life is fragile, precious, and not under my command.  We can’t be proud and try to hold onto something so tender too tightly.  We also can’t ignore it and think life is under no control and chaos rules.

 

Rather, let’s honor the life given by the Creator of life, who allows us to live it.  We don’t have to control it, expand it or distribute it, just live and use it to bring glory to the source and origin of life.

 

Jeremiah 10:23 in The Message notes that mere mortals can’t run their own lives because we don’t have what it takes.  I do not own the berry bushes.  I have no control over when and how many berries ripen and are harvested.  I’m privileged to show up when the berry patch owner opens the gate!

 

I don’t have what it takes to manage my Life but I know who does—God.  He gave me life, biologically and spiritually, physically and eternally.  Once upon a time, in a ladies room in Denver airport, I pointed out to a 3 year old boy expressing his dislike of the travel day, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.  Go along with the flight schedule as it is or be angry and embarrassed along the journey.  I was glad the 3-year-old was wise enough to give the easy way a try.  It’s tough to be trapped in an airplane with an angry toddler!  Suppose God feels the same way?

 

The next time I feel like that 3 year old, frustrated with lack of control of life, I’m going to think of blueberries, which I love, fresh, frozen, mixed or baked.  Life is a gift and God is in control.  I don’t have it in me to control the chaos of life on earth (the hard way). I have the promise of eternal life with God.  The easy way is to trust and follow God’s plan for my life (and maybe strive to break the four pound mark for a day of blueberry picking!).

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