By their fruits ye shall know them. We quote this all the time, and most of us know what it means. (That is an Old King James quote, by the way. While so many of you mock the OKJ, you sure do quote it enough!!!) When you look at someone. don't just look at their appearance - I myself am big. tall, and ugly, perhaps bringing to mind dumb, slow, and lazy. No, instead look at the whole of a person. What kind of things do they accomplish? Are they righteous and truly obedient to God?

I have a peach tree. When I bought it, it produced.... one peach. Just one. While it was a very tasty peach, it was the only one I got for the first three years. Oh, a few peaches would form and would grow to about the size of a walnut before falling off the tree each summer, inedible and useless. You might think I ought to chop this thing down and replace it with a new tree, since it wasn't good for much.

Now, compare that to Robert's peach trees. As he explains it to me, he doesn't do anything special to them. He doesn't spray them, or fertilize them, or nurture them at all. Yet every year when I happen to be at his house at the right time, he has some yummy peaches on his trees. He once said he was thinking of chopping them out of their spot along the drive. Sacrilege!

You see, I LOVE peaches. They are my favorite fruit without a doubt. It seems to me a ripe, sweet peach would be more likely to tempt Eve than any old apple! I like them fresh, frozen, in shakes and ice cream, with milk, on top of things, and just about any other way they are prepared. They can be a bit expensive, though, so it was probably no surprise that one day I pulled into a nursery with Deniese in tow for the specific reason of buying my own. And every year since I watched my tree, which I planted and fertilized and nurtured just for the sake of getting peaches from, grow green nubs that fell off dead while in the same climate Roberts grew them effortlessly. Whyforhowcome? By their fruits ye shall know them, and in this case maybe my tree was due to become firewood or furniture.

But all that changed this year. This year my tree is almost lying on the ground - many of its branches are. They have bent over with the weight of the peaches it has produced. I didn't cull them early on, since I expected the tree to grow lots of little ones like Robert's does. Not so! Mine are ballooning out to the size of baseballs, and the large numbers of them are threatening to snap off the branches.

Imagine a person's life like that! They might have, early on, a youthful innocence and an appearance of righteousness which we adore. Then they grow older, and start living more and more openly for themselves. Oh, there is a token good work now and then but it's not anything that truly nourishes another. Suppose this person becomes a Christian, and in their zeal take on the duties and responsibilities such a life entails. They suddenly live not for themselves but for others! All I have to do is look at my peach tree to view in my mind's eye someone busy producing for God - healthy, tasty fruit in huge abundance. Beautiful to see, easy to pick. Even the ones that fall on the ground ripe are delicious!

And each of these fruits contains a seed, the potential for someone to come along, benefit from the good fruit, and plant that seed in fertile ground, perhaps their own heart. Where, if the ground truly is good ground, the seed can grow to a tree of its own and produce fruit. That's the gospel, displayed clearly for us in nature. If I can live up to that simple standard, well, that would be just peachy!

Randy