MOUSEY MOMENT … HARVEST IN THE ORCHARD

I love apples! Almost more than chocolate! Biting into a warm, crisp, just picked apple is only one step away from doing the same in summer with tomatoes! On my afternoon walk with Tip (my border collie) I recently passed a garden on Springfield where there was a box of windfall apples – free for the takingl

Apples are a wonderful tool to teach us about our faith.

When you cut an apple in half across it’s middle (the equator line), the cross section in the core looks like a star; the five-pointed Epiphany Star. Epiphany celebrates God revealing himself to the world through the baby Jesus. Epiphany is celebrated as a Christian holiday on January 6th, which is the 12th day after Christmas and marks the end of the Christmas season. The holiday is also known as the Feast of Epiphany, Three Kings’ Day. The Magi noticed an unusual alignment in the stars that seemed to predict the birth of a new “King of the Jews”. They followed the star to Bethlehem, where they found Jesus and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

When you cut an apple in half from top to bottom you will see the three parts: skin, flesh and seeds. The outer skin represents the Father who encompasses all, Jesus is the flesh of the fruit that feeds us, and the seeds are the Holy Spirit that when planted, will bring new life. An apple wouldn’t be an apple if any one of these elements was missing; so, too, with the Trinity. These parts are all pieces of a whole and all have special jobs. The peel protects the fruit from the elements so that it stays fresh and healthy. The fruit nourishes us. The seeds provide new life, making it possible for another apple tree to grow and more fruit to abound. Three parts, one whole.

Cut open an apple and think about what you see inside.

Did you know there is a special variety of apple that is called the ‘12 disciples’ because it has 12 pips?

Read these verses from the Bible about apples:

Deuteronomy 32:10 ‘In a desert land he found him, in a barren and howling waste. He shielded him and cared for him; he guarded him as the apple of his eye.’

Psalm 17:8 ‘Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings.’

Proverbs 7:2 ‘Keep my commands and you will live; guard my teachings as the apple of your eye.’

What do you think it means to be the apple of someone’s eye? With Stokesley Agricultural Show fast approaching, we’ll no doubt see the best of the best on display in the Horticultural tent reminding us that apples are a prized and valuable fruit. How do they think God sees us? As you hold your own humble apple, think about any of the verses above. Remember that you are the apple. You are precious to God and the apple of his eye.

How do the pips help us to think about the season of Harvest?

We might think that the Harvest is the end of the Autumn season, but the pips inside help us to remember that at the end of each season there is a beginning to another.

What began in the garden of Eden is not end of the story. The story told in Genesis 3 is what Christians refer to as ‘The Fall’. God created Adam, the first man, and Eve, the first woman, and placed them in a perfect home, the Garden of Eden. In fact, everything about Earth was perfect at that moment in time.

Food, in the form of fruit and vegetables, was plentiful and free for the taking. The garden God created was spectacularly beautiful. Even the animals got along with one another, all of them eating plants at that early stage.

God put two important trees in the garden: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam’s duties were clear. God told him to tend the garden and not eat the fruit of those two trees, or he would die. Adam passed that warning on to his wife.

Then Satan entered the garden, disguised as a serpent. He did what he is still doing today. He lied:

“You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:4-5)

Instead of believing God, Eve believed Satan. She ate the fruit and gave some to her husband to eat. Scripture says “the eyes of both of them were opened.” (Genesis 3:7) They realized they were naked and made hasty coverings from fig leaves. God invoked curses on Satan, Eve & Adam. God could have destroyed Adam and Eve, but out of his gracious love, he killed animals to make clothes for them to cover their newly-discovered nakedness. He did, however, cast them out of the Garden of Eden.

From that time on, the Bible records a sad history of humanity disobeying God, but God had put his plan of salvation in place before the foundation of the world. He responded to the Fall of Man with a Saviour and Redeemer, his Son Jesus Christ.

Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience to God was the first human sin. They forever ruined human nature, passing on the desire to sin to every person born since.

God did not tempt Adam and Eve, nor did he create them as robot-like beings without free will. Out of love, he gave them the right to choose, the same right he gives people today. God forces no one to follow him.

The contrast between the world before sin and the world today is frightening. Disease and suffering are rampant. Wars are always going on somewhere, and closer to home, people treat one another cruelly. Christ offered freedom from sin at his first coming and will close the “end times” at his second coming.  

As we hold our apples and contemplate the pips, we can see that the end represented by the fruit in our hands, represents the beginning of the next fruit, the potential for a whole new generation of apples. Just as Jesus’ death was not the end of his life but the beginning of us being able to experience heaven here on earth. Help us to recognise that endings, even when they are painful and sad, represent the beginnings of new seasons in our lives.