Apples and Trees

Apple Polisher

Apple jelly is delicious on toast

In the golden olden days, children showed their appreciation for their teacher by bringing them a delicious apple. While this may have garnered favour from the teacher, it could also turn jealous classmates against the thoughtful gift giver and thusly, the label "apple polisher" emerged. 

Fruity friends

A rotten apple is a threat to the bunch, and is also a metaphorical warning; let it stay amongst its' fruity friends, and it will destroy the rest of them, making them inedible, or in the case of humans, making them just as potentially rotten. 

Judging a tree

Next up in my mental queue of apple references is judging a tree by its fruit. Trees are cut down when disease is detected: who wants to munch on a trees decaying produce? The bold statement here, is you are some kind of fruit dear reader, and you will be judged by what you produce. 

With a cringe

Lastly, and without exhausting the fruit and tree metaphors, because I am confident you may be thinking of many more, there is this: the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. This is the one that I must land on with a cringe. 

When fully ripened, trees let go of their fruit. The fruit, say an apple, is far more appealing when it is plucked from a branch, rather than from the ground, where perhaps decaying has begun. Apples fall from apple trees, coconuts from on high palm trees and cucumbers from cucumber trees (just checking to see if you still with me dear reader, because I promise I will make a point soon). 

We never expect bananas from a peach tree, or monkeys from a human mother, (despite the ridiculousness of the suggestion that we evolved from primates). You get the point. The cringing part is the fallen fruit, the already turning into insect- food-rotting, that the earth inevitably engages itself in... the reabsorption:

All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again (Ecclesiastes 3:20)

Going for the jugular vein
Here I will go for the jugular vein pulsating with life blood on either side of your neck: You are an apple and you came from a tree. You are the product of parents, and ancestral roots are partially visible to the naked eye, that being those relatives still alive or recently departed. Then their are the deeper roots, buried beneath the surface, say your great great great grandmama on your paternal and maternal sides of the family. But for them, you would not be, so to speak. 

Their life blood flows in you, and you can feel the pulse when you hold your hands to your carotid arteries. They are you and you are them, and this may be the grandest truth ever told, or it may be the most vile thing to be observed and uttered, because the tree and its fruit are identifiable, undeniable, impossible to separate. You are produce dear one. You came from someone, many someones that came before you. The tree you grew from may be the healthiest one in the orchard, and the fruit it has borne, the most delicious and sumptuous, or rot, I mean not... 

Let us cut to the chase, shall we?

I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me (John 15:1-4)

Take a look now at who you come from: 

• Are you just like them? 
• Does this raise the corners of your mouth, in elated delight, or are your eyebrows turning downward and drawing close together, in consternation and concern? 
• Are you proud of who you are, and do you represent your ancestors well, carrying on their bold and beautiful fruitful lives of kindness, compassion, mercy, generosity, and love or; 
• Are you just like them in the opposite direction, which does not need to be described here since you, dear reader, know exactly what your family is like and what kind of fruits they are 😏 

I am a fan of my Teacher and may comfortably be considered, an apple polisher. I know where I came from humanly speaking, and sometimes my fruit has been on the rotten inedible side. Thankfully, I know this timeless truth:

And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert grafted in among them, and with them partakes of the root and fatness of the olive tree; Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee (Romans 11:17-18) 

We all come from humans but, but dear reader, we are invited into the family of God Almighty through Christ. He is the tree of life and as an apple or an olive, I want to be just like Him, getting my nourishing sap from The Root, the Creator of all things fruity and human. My support comes from Him. 

Where, dear one, do you get your "sap", your support, your life giving nourishment? 

Where?