Your Choice Poison or Pie?

 

Our granddaughter Ivy loves cherries. Over the summer, we have been fortunate to have her down from Virginia almost a full month this year. It just so happens that this time of year must be the primal season for cherry harvesting, because the shelves have been jam packed with overflowing containers of these deep, crimson red poppers. I'll have to admit I enjoy sitting down and having a bowl myself. If you've ever eaten a cherry, then you probably can relate to the one issue I have, the pit. Biting into a cherry is not recommended, the cherry pit is as hard as a rock and the meat of the cherry is tightly wrapped around the pit, so there is definitely a skill to eating this particular fruit. 

Here's an interesting fact about that rock hard cherry pit, a hand full of seeds dried out and crushed into a powder will create the lethal poison, cyanide. I'm no scientist and have no desire to create poison, but I find it intriguing that the same pit or seed that can be planted in the ground to produce yet another cherry tree and thus more fruit, can also be gathered, processed, and create a substance that can be detrimental and deadly. Same pit, two choices, create poison or create produce, and you alone make the choice about which you will produce. Throughout your life, you will make similar choices with the "cherries" you are given. Will you create poison or will you plant a garden?

There exist two sayings centered around cherries, the first comments that "life is just a bowlful of cherries". The other laments that "life isn't just a bowl of cherries". I don't think I have to go into which of these statements would be crossing the lips of the pessimist and the optimist, yet the fact of the matter is regardless of what life hands you, the choice of what you are going to do with that handful of cherries is completely up to one person, YOU. 

Life happens, circumstances, conditions, situations, and just downright nature all play pivotal roles in our state of being. I believe that we are not a product of our environment, but instead we are more of a product of the choices that we make in that environment. Life gives us cherries and then we have to decide whether we make a pie or we make poison. One can be shared with others and provides a wonderful end to a meal, the other can create destruction and ripples of negative impacts for generations. Why would anyone choose to make poison over a sweet cherry pie? I don't have that answer, but look around it happens on so many different levels each and every day!

Everything that happens in your life happens for a purpose. I just don't believe in coincidence. But, what happens when life happens is a choice, the choice, that each one of us has to make. We were created to do good in the image of God that has been shared with us through the life of His Son. Ephesians 2:10 tells us "For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago." NLT. A key word in that scripture is "can", the scripture doesn't read that we “will” do the things we were created to do, it plainly says so we can which conveys the idea of a choice that is going to have to be made. I researched several English translations of this particular verse and pretty much any way you translate the message it transfers the idea of making a choice about whether you choose to follow God's desired purpose or not. That's just the human nature of it all. Cherry pits can make poison, or that same pit can be the catalyst for creating an orchard over decades of nurturing and cultivating. Your choice poison or pie? I have made the choice to plant orchards, nurture their growth, and ultimately produce more cherries, to create the potential for perpetual cherry pies to be shared. “… the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” Matthew 9:37-38.

Plant a seed, plan on growing an orchard. 

Coach Carter