Wormy Apples

I guess I need to just be still long enough for the Lord to speak to me in the way He does when I know it’s for sharing. Like today. I made applesauce this morning. There is nothing better than from-the-tree applesauce tucked away in your freezer for a cold December day. This year was especially exciting since it was the first harvest from our own trees – supplemented by my neighbors’ windfalls.

I don’t know if you have ever made applesauce, but it is a labor of love. And I do mean labor. Apples from the tree are not supermarket apples. What you get from your common backyard apple tree are wormy apples, bruised apples, apples that have been sampled and passed over, and knobby, crooked apples. That means that even with a chopper/peeler/corer there is still a lot of work to be done to make the apples pot-ready. Bad spots have to be trimmed off. Fruit that don’t go through the machine straight has to have the core trimmed out a bit. Sometimes the peel at the top and bottom get overlooked by the peeler and that has to go too (mostly because I don’t like it in my sauce and I HATE having to deal with it in the ricer). And then there’s the mess. Bags of peels (I don’t make jelly) and cores and trimmings leaking apple juice all over everything in sight making a sticky mess on the counters, the sink, and the floor.

All of these practical inconveniences were making me grumble a bit today because I have a ton of stuff to do and didn’t really have time to be making applesauce. But fruit waits for no man. So, it wasn’t until I got the apples peeled, potted, cooked down, and riced (is that a word) that I began to get the picture. See, after you’ve worked the apples into a sauce, you have to sample a bit to know how much sugar to add, and I could not get enough sugar into this sauce! It just would not sweeten up. That’s when it hit me that the applesauce was too much like me.

Praise the Lord in heaven that He has already dealt with the worms, the bruises, the wobbles and the pits and has mashed me down into this new creation, which he assures me I have become…still an apple, just different…but now the work begins to sweeten and season and enhance. In my applesauce I’ve added red-hots along with copious amounts of sugar and cinnamon and I’ve left it to absorb those flavors for a while. When I go back, I expect the taste to be different-to be sweeter. It’s the same with me. This new creation I’ve become would be fine, I suppose, if nothing else was added, but how much better could I be if I soaked in the Word, stewed in His flavor and let myself become saturated with Him through and through. 

I’m hoping for the best with my sauce because it was a ton of work, and I do love the taste so much when it’s just right. I know the Lord is hoping for the same thing from me. So much goes into the process on His part and there’s so little required on my part that it seems a small thing to rest and absorb His sweet Spirit. I will take time to do that today and hopefully tomorrow you will taste and see that the Lord is good. Before I can do that, though, I’ve got to go deal with all the garbage piled up and leaking all over my kitchen.