Yesterday we went to pick blueberries. I LOVED picking blueberries when we lived in
Tennessee! Each summer my friend and I
would endure the sweat in order to gather buckets of the yummy blue healthy
bites….that was after we ate a bucket or two while we picked. (which was legal, by the way)!
The first year we moved to Indiana and blueberry season
rolled around I began to ask the locals to find out where was the best place to
pick blueberries. The
answer….Sams!! Yep! Sams!
No so much fun and so I kept pursuing!
The website www.pickyourown.org was super helpful finding a
place to pick blueberries….so, one cloudy, cool Saturday
July morning (yep, you read that right!! I never recall using the words cool and July together in Tennessee) my husband and I took off on a road trip in search of the amazing
blueberries I remembered from Tennessee.
After driving and driving in the middle of no-where for hours we finally
pull up to the pickyourown site.
I could hardly contain my excitement!! Rows and rows of blueberries!!! Beautiful, round, blue and just waiting for
me to take home and make yummy blueberry pie or blueberry pound cake or
simply eat by the handful!!
The nice man showed us where to begin and gave us two
buckets….off we went. For some odd
reason we did not eat any of the round beauties until we had picked a bunch of
them….and when we did eat one…Yuck!!
Sour! Not sweet at all! What in the world??? You mean we drove and drove and picked and
picked and the berries were not even sweet?
Not even good? Oh, and did I
mention we were freezing??? July and
freezing!! Rain had started as
well. I was bound and determined to keep
on….picking sour blueberries in the cold rain just because it seemed wrong to
return home without them.
Here’s the deal….once those blueberries were added to the
sugar and other not-so-good-for-you ingredients…the blueberries tasted
great!! Side note--Every year since then I have
gotten my blueberries at Sams!!
Fast forward to yesterday….and we are picking blueberries at
a new place I found much closer to our home (and an Abuelos Mexican restaurant!)
and the kids and I were off to once again pick blueberries. We start our row….I taste immediately (yes,
they allow eating and picking in Indiana too) and, sure enough, they are
sour!! Grrrrr. (I did mention to the great folks weighing the
pounds of blueberries we picked that the blueberries in Tennessee are much
sweeter than Indiana’s. Sure hope I
didn’t hurt their feelings!)
However…..this time…..by the time we got home (and after
they sat in the warm car while we went to the park and Abuelos for lunch)
they were amazing!!! Delicious! Super sweet!!! In fact, they didn’t compare at all to the
blueberries I had already bought at Sams!!
Sometimes ministry, like blueberries, can be cold and sour and not at all what we expected and we want to throw the whole bunch of it (them) away or, better yet, leave them on the proverbial bushes for someone else! Sometimes it is cold and uncomfortable and we want to give up and go home. However, sometimes, like blueberries, ministry just need a little time…..sometimes
ministry just need a little more ‘ingredients’ to go with it….sometimes there
are things and/or people in our lives that appear/taste sour…not good at all…yet,
with time and/or ‘working together’ we can see/taste the ‘good’ God has in it
after all.
Keep picking my friend!! Your toil is not in vain in the Lord!!! Besides, it just seems wrong to return 'home' without them.
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