Fruit Salad

By Geraldine Witcher

I was picking blackberries the other day. It was warm and sunny and the fruit was ripe and juicy from all the rain we've had. It seemed to me that blackberries were a picture of grace - we don't plant them, we don't deserve them, but we have to reach out and pick them. Grace too only becomes ours when we reach out for it. There are always more than you expect and often they are hidden. Like grace -we come upon that in unexpected places too.

But there is a way in which grace is not at all like blackberries. I returned from my picking covered in scratches on my arms and legs, some even bleeding. And I realized gratefully that grace is bought by his wounds, not mine.

While I was picking my daughter came out and on hearing my thoughts about blackberries told me that her Bible reading that day had included a comment by writer Luci Shaw that we are like people picking raspberries. No one ever looks underneath the bush, where many berries are hidden and left on the tree. So we need to look, 'under the bush' for opportunities or ideas that we otherwise may miss.

Then later that day, picking little wild plums, hardly bigger than cherries, I had to reach up into the blue sky and stand on tip toe to reach the ripest fruit. They hung golden and red and tasty - a gift from God - but to turn them into a pie for my family I had to pick, and then laboriously remove the stones from the tiny fruit. Gifts, but they needed working on, and cooking, to enable them to be shared with others.

Blackberries, raspberries, plums - fruit salad

Grace, opportunities, gifts - God's 'salad' just as freely given to be picked and used and shared.

Geraldine Witcher,   August 2000