How Picking Dewberries is Like Reading the Bible

Judith and I love to pick dewberries.  She is great at making pies and jelly.  I am pretty good at eating them. It was 2012 that we were last able to pick some dewberries.  The years of drought have taken their toll, but this year there was more rain which means more berries, even if there are fewer vines.

While picking some recently, I thought about how picking dewberries is similar to reading the Bible and finding spiritual truth.  Three principles came to mind (sorry, can't help it I am a preacher) about picking dewberries and reading the Bible.

The Application Principle:
When dewberries are at their ripest, their sweetest, they very easily fall off the vine.  If you touch them without really grasping them, they fall and are usually lost.  I can read the sweetest words in the Word, I can hear the best sermons or lessons but if I do not apply these wonderful words to real actions, then they are usually lost.  I must learn to grasp, to put into application what I hear.  James calls us to be doers and not hearers only (James 1:22).

The Appearance Principle:
While picking dewberries, if you see one ripe one and don't go to investigate because you only see one, you will miss a lot of good berries.  You need to go search for more, even if only one is visible. Where I find a ripe berry and I keep looking, usually more will appear.  In reading the Bible, I may see a single truth that may seem small or insignificant.  But if I do not go deeper on that "small" truth, I will miss a lot of other truths.  Where there is one, there is always more.  If I begin to apply God's word in a single area, if I begin to meditate on what one small truth really means, more truth will appear.

The Accumulation Principle:
Dewberries are wild vines.  They are scattered and at times sparse, but if I keep picking and going from vine to vine I can accumulate enough to make something out them.  It takes two cups of dewberries to make a pie.  That is not all that much but you will never get two cups from a single vine.  In reading the Bible, I may not seem to get very much out of it on any one particular day, but if I keep at it every day the truths accumulate.  Soon, I can look back and see that my life is changing.  I probably cannot tell that from one day to the next, but it will accumulate in me over time.

I don't know if you will ever pick dewberries, but I hope you will read the Bible.  Dewberries are in season for a very short time, God's word never goes out of season.  It is especially ripe when it is open.

for the journey...

Tim