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A Peachy Life-by Heidi McLaughlin

Posted: September 11, 2022

Over the past few years my grandson Brandon and I, have started a wonderful and fruitful tradition of canning peaches. It’s hard work, we get very sweaty but it’s also fun and the results are so rewarding and meaningful.  This year I discovered a little more about the life of a peach.

Firstly, the harsh winter froze many peach buds, making it a very limited peach harvest. Thus doubled the price of peaches. But thankfully I have a great relationship with the family that owns a fruit stand down the road from where I live and I was able to get quite a few pounds of this desired fruit.

Here’s what I discovered.

Here’s what I discovered:

• Some were not able to survive the long, cold and dark winter.
• The fruit that did survive the winter took a longer time to ripen.
• Even though we’re at the end of the peach season, the last ones that did finally ripen were richer and sweeter than all the rest.

Here’s what I learned:

• We all encounter harsh winter seasons of our life and some of us choose to all the season to make us stronger and better. Some people give us, get mad at God and go their own way.
• The ones that did survive ripened later in the season and took longer to become sweet. In the spiritual sense, when we’ve come through a harsh, dark and ugly season, it takes a while to get our bearings. But with God’s help and determination we get there.
• The last “hangers on” and survivors to the end became the most delicious, sweet and juicy peaches.

Here’s the best part.

Here’s the best part. All of us will encounter cold and ugly seasons of our life.  Period. But when we have hope in God and trust Him to help us through all the changing and difficult seasons, when we come to autumn times of our lives we will be the survivors. We enter into the strongest, sweetest and most fruit-producing season of our life. It’s all the darkness and cold that brought out the sweetness. I love the Bible verses that says:

“For I am about to do something new.
See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?
I will make a pathway through the wilderness.
I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.” (Isaiah 43:19)

After the harshness of Covid and all its ramifications, God wants to nurture beautiful and new sweet fruit in our lives.  For God to creative rivers in the dry wasteland we have to be grafted into His power and presence.

We can’t do this alone.

Are you going through a difficult season right now? Graft yourself into God’s word, declare His promises, pray without ceasing and hang on. Your fruitful season is on its way.

 

 

 

Posted in: adversity, alone, bitterness, canning peaches, decisions, don't give up, endurance, graft into Jesus, grief, meaningful, pathway through wilderness, pray, resilience, seasons of darkness, seasons of life, something new, suffering, sweet fruit, troubles, trust Good