A Berry Reminder

There happens to be a large patch of wild black raspberries in the woods behind my house. You should be jealous. Angel and I enjoyed picking and eating them last year during late June and early July, and we’ve been impatiently waiting for them to ripen over the last few weeks. 

 A too-early trip to the patch. No berries yet!

Today was the first time I managed to harvest any berries. Not many, the berries are just beginning to ripen, and there are few black berries compared to all the red and green ones, but I couldn’t wait any longer, and picked a couple of handfuls for an afternoon snack. There weren’t enough to save for a berry smoothie to share with Angel, so I thought I might as well eat them all before he comes home from work. I’ll pick some more in a few days and then we’ll have smoothies.

As I braved the thorns, briars, giant weeds, and bugs in our little wild berry patch, I thought about what my mom says every time she peels an orange or a banana. “You know,” she says, “Fruit reminds me of God.”

Then she’ll explain. Fruit is a tasty, serving size snack. The wrapper is either biodegradable (banana) or edible (apple). They’re full of vitamins and, although they’re sweet, the sweetness doesn’t do the same kind of damage as processed, refined white sugar or high fructose corn syrup. For variety, there’s different kinds in different seasons and different parts of the world, so you’ll never get bored. Man really hasn’t invented a snack that can compare to the simple fruit.

I sometimes laughed when Mom went through her “fruit as a reminder of God” speech countless times over the years, but today, as I was picking black raspberries, I was reminded of God too. I did nothing to earn or deserve these sweet berries. It just so happens that I have access to a whole bunch of bushes bearing these, and I can pick them for free whenever they’re ripe. Angel and I have all the food we need. We just came home from the grocery store yesterday with a full cart of groceries. We don’t actually need black raspberries. These berries are just a little extra, and they are a wonderful extra—almost like an “I love you” note from God.

Thank you God, for all the extras in our lives, among them, wild black raspberries.

Why is it that vegetables don’t remind us of God?