My family has a longstanding tradition of fruit picking. I have precious childhood memories of morning blueberry-picking sessions in Southwest Michigan, filling buckets with berries by noon. We would then head to the beach to cool off from the heat of picking. Those berries were so satisfying to pick because of their large, juicy size and the fact that so many of them typically clustered together.
As an adult, I moved to interior Alaska, where I discovered that not all blueberries are alike. In Alaska, we have lowbush blueberries. They are very small but packed with intense flavor. What would take me an hour to pick in Michigan could take several hours in Alaska. Because of how challenging it was to gather a substantial amount of blueberries, it took me more than five years to go on my first proper blueberry-foraging outing. Though it was a slow, back-aching job, the berries were incredibly rewarding. They were more challenging and uncomfortable to pick, but the reward was worth the effort.
This reminds me of a vision Ellen White received from God in which she was also picking berries. She was with a group that had traveled just outside a city and stopped in a field to pick berries. Ellen had great success with berry picking, but her companions had a vastly different experience. Some focused on fruit that was far away. Others pursued the low bushes, where there were few berries, while neglecting to check the high bushes, which contained many. Most of the group became distracted by many other activities. Ellen even offered to pick with them, but most of her companions gave excuses for why they should not join her.
At the end of the day, Ellen shared some insights as they reflected on their time together:
“You did not come to the field with an earnest determination to find fruit. You must hereafter work with more zeal and earnestness, and with an altogether different object in view, or your labors will never be successful. By working in the right way, you will teach the younger workers that such matters as eating and recreation are of minor importance”-GW92 331.1
Wasting good fruit is a shame, but the fruit in this story represents people who could come to know Jesus and join us in the blessed hope. As we enjoy fruit-picking season, whether it is easy or difficult to pick, let us remember that there is a much more precious fruit: human beings who need to meet our loving Savior.
Sometimes it is easy, and sometimes it is hard to connect. It can be difficult to know who is receptive to God. The only way to discover this is to get to know those around us and show them His love. Join me in prayerfully living out our faith and persistently looking for those whom we can love as God would have us love them.