I’m a big fan of summer, mainly because it’s the season of fresh fruit. In these days of truck farms, long-haul transport, and supermarkets, you can buy most any fruit year round, but there’s something special about local fruits in their proper season.
And berries: Samuel and I have picked buckets of blueberries and blackberries this summer. The blueberries came from a couple of bushes in my parents’ back yard. The blackberries grow along the edge of a “sports field” (where no sports are played) that’s a common area for our subdivision. Fortunately, either I’m the only one who realizes what they are, or the only one willing to pick up a few scratches and ticks in return for a bucket of finger-staining, lip-smacking berries.
Speaking of lip-smacking, one of the best things about fruit is that you can make cobblers and pies with it. Lately I’ve been experimenting with a relatively healthy version of blackberry cobbler (in my mind, at least), using whole wheat flour and Splenda in place of most of the sugar and white flour. It’s a little chewier, but still good enough to put a grin on my face.
I’m anticipating other fruits: my fig tree looks really good this year, with a good crop of early figs that will ripen soon, and lots of smaller figs that will ripen in late summer. Few things are better than a fig straight from the tree — you can ask Jesus about that: the gospels suggest he was often quite disappointed when he looked for fruit on a fig tree and found none.
Even my carefully tended tomatoes are technically fruits. And, unlike the hothouse variety you can buy year-round, they have both texture and flavor. Some of them are even shaping up to be one-slice sandwich sized. Just the anticipation makes me smile.
You don’t have to look far in the Bible to find references to fruit: fruit is created in Genesis 1, and is featured both literally and metaphorically throughout. Psalm 1 reminds us that the wise will be like trees planted by water that produce their fruit in season. Jesus called for fruits of repentance (Mat. 3:8), and Paul memorably described the “fruits of the Spirit” as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22-23).
You can’t make cobbler from those, but you can make a fine life.
Professor of Old Testament at Campbell University Divinity School in Buies Creek, North Carolina, and the Contributing Editor and Curriculum Writer at Good Faith Media.
