Our kitchen counter on Sunday morning.
Four years ago we planted a little orange tree in our backyard. We were told to expect fruit anywhere from 3-5 years later. Last year, at our three-year mark, we eagerly watched the tree for signs of fruit and there it was: one solitary green ball that slowly turned orange as Christmas approached. After Christmas, we pulled it off its weak little branch and divided the long-anticipated orange into sections at the dinner table that night.
Imagine our delight this year when green balls dangled from all sides of the little tree. “Twenty-five!” “No, I counted twenty-nine!” My kids argued about our potential harvest. Once again, we watched the small balls turn into large fruit that bowed the branches precariously. And, after Christmas, we eagerly began harvesting our fruit, only to discover that the top fourth or third of each fruit was white, dry, stringy, and bland (if we could even force ourselves to chew it up!). I cut the juicy bottoms off for fruit salads, but the majority of the oranges were harvested into the refrigerator for a few days before being thrown away. (For some reason, I couldn’t bear to just pick the fruit and toss it: I had to pretend that there was chance it would get eaten!) Our harvest was thwarted, as were the kids’ plans to pick an orange in the morning for their lunch, to have freshly squeezed orange juice every Sunday morning, and to partner with the kids down the street to create a successful orangeade/lemonade stand.
That is, until last Saturday night when Natalie called me up: “I have bags of extra citrus that I got from a friend,” she said. “Do you want some?” With garbage sacks full of oranges, grapefruits, and lemons, on Sunday morning, the kids and I got out the juicer and in 10 minutes had fresh orange and grapefruit juice for Sunday breakfast and lemon juice to be made into lemonade for lunch and dinner. I cut the fruit in half and the kids (even the 2-year-old) took turns pressing the halves down on the juicer. The kids laughed and oooed and ahhed over the fast-rising juice line. They stacked the empty halves up into towers and then tried to make baskets by throwing them into the waiting trash bag. We froze some of the juice into citrus pops, gave some to the neighbors, and put some aside for the grand lemonade/orangeade/grapefruit-ade venture this coming weekend. At dinner, the kids slurped their lemonade with satisfaction, and, with a comradeship that’s often missing around these parts, complimented each other on the “perfectly sugared” outcome of the morning’s teamwork.
Now, I love the Law of the Harvest. As the granddaughter of farmers and the daughter of avid gardeners, I have seen bounteous evidence of its literal truthfulness, and, as a daughter of heavenly parents, I have seen bounteous evidence of its spiritual truthfulness. I have clung many times to the promise that “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7). But equally important to me are the exceptions to the Law, times when I have sowed and sowed and come up empty-handed, with nothing but white, dry oranges, and someone else has stepped in to share their own harvest, their own faith, their own fruit.
When has the Law of the Harvest blessed you? When have exceptions to the Law blessed you?
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