A Letter to My Peach Tree: A Peachy Parable

 

A Letter to My Peach Tree: A Peachy Parable
John 15: 9-17

Jesus said, “You did not chose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father ib my name, He may give to you.”

My dear peach tree,

As I ducked under your well-laden branches this morning, it occurred to me that I haven’t thanked you for what you have again produced this spring. I realize that might sound silly to you, thanking a peach tree – almost as silly as writing a letter to a tree! – after all, you are a peach tree. A peach tree’s job, it’s vocation, if you will, is to produce peaches. You have done so abundantly for a third consecutive year.

Megan and I chose you five years ago from Mr. Moritz’s nursery, one tree among dozens of Rio Grande peach trees which, itself, was one specie of peach among many others. Why I chose you, I don’t recall, but you would up at myself and, one muggy, warm Saturday, we planted you in the yard.

This was supposed to be a simple FFA project, a requirement for her class – with photographic evidence – for her to get a good grade. But, somehow, you became more than just a means to an end, a stepping-stone on the way to a high school diploma with the expenditure of a few bucks and some sweat along the way. You became important to me.

You became my tree.

The other trees around the yard, they were there before we arrived. They are there, providing shade for me, nesting places for birds, and acorns for deer and squirrels. They are there. This tree is mine. You are mine. I spray you with a special, food-friendly insecticide to keep cutter ants and bugs away. I fertilize you in the fall and the spring. I water you several times a week. When Freeze-A-Geddon hit a few years ago, I wrapped you in blankets and plastic and carefully nested a heat lamp in the  center crotch of the trunk to keep you alive. I actually worried about you, checking on you each day to make sure you were as OK as I could make you. At the risk of sounding totally nuts, I implored the Lord to spare you and bless you to bear fruit.

He did, and you did. You stand as evidence of God’s mercy and grace even upon creation.

You have borne fruit that has been enjoyed by countless people. The first year, you actually made a few small peaches. The second year, you made about a dozen or so peaches that I wrestled squirrels to save. The following year, you produced peaches enough for me to put up eight or nine quarts in the freezer, plus start sharing with friends and family. Last year, after sharing fresh fruit with others, you produced enough fruit that I put up several dozen jars of peach jelly - some of which wound up boosting the morale of several sailors at the Navy A-school in Chicago last fall. This year, you are so loaded that branches are bending under the weight of the fruit, threatening to break as they practically touch the ground. I simply home I can use them all and not waste your work, your effort, your blessing.

You are doing what you are called to do, created to do, by God. You bear fruit. Your season of fruit-bearing is brief. Buds start appearing in February, turn to peachlets in March, and fill out in April to ripe, sweet fruit. But by mid-May, your branches are void of fruit, again standing tall, freed from the juicy, sweet weight. Your job is done, and you patiently wait while resting and growing, and preparing for another season after the dormancy of fall.

Sadly, even in this, your fruit-bearing is brief. Peace trees last but a short time. Compared to the mighty, century-old live oaks that grow nearby, you may only live a fifth of that with only a decade or so of fruit production. Then, at best you will become wood for smoking; at worst, waste to be tossed on someone’s burn pile.

Yet, you will abide – not in some weird, supernatural , Shirley McLane “spiritual” sense, but in your fruit. At the heart of each peach lies a seed. I will take the pit of the peach, the seed, and I will plant them carefully so that your offspring will survive. In and through them, you abide. They will also be planted and cared for and grow up tall and strong and productive, like you. And I will ask of them what I asked of you: to bear fruit in keeping with the peach tree. That’s what peach trees do: make peaches, which is what God has made you to do.

And with each peach that grows, is eaten, shared, and enjoyed, God smiles because you have done what God created and chose you to do.

Well done, good and faithful peach.