The Promise of the Blossom

When our apple trees burst into bloom this year, the sight was so lovely I begged Kevin to go get pictures. He obliged, and I made them into greeting cards.

A blossom is a promise of fruit. But it takes a lot of work to get a blossom, and then more work to get fruit. And a lot of time and unexpected happenings can occur in between.

When you plant a tree, you expect to have to nourish it and protect it and care for it for a couple of years, just to get it to show blossoms. And then they are few. Often the first ones do not result in fruit. Maybe the next ones do though.

The blossoms appear, and they look lovely. We always get exited when we see them, because they mean spring is here, and summer is on its way. Summer always seems easier to handle than winter!

But then the blossoms wither, fall off, and sit there looking ugly for weeks, until you can finally see that fruit IS going to develop.

The first sign of fruit is small, green, unappetizing things, unfit for consumption. They take more care to get them to the point where they are even edible, and even more to get to the point where you’d want to share them, or enjoy them!

How like that our business is. So much work just to see an indication that it will work, and more work while things look ugly and we forget the promise of the blossom.

Even after a harvest, we may have times when the business dies back – and we wonder if we’ll see blossoms again next season. The same sense of excitement comes when the blossoms finally do appear.

Biblically, the Lord uses the alegories of planting, tending, and harvesting to teach. They still apply.