Feeding

Patrolling the four trees we call the orchard today, I see that they are much healthier looking than they have been for the last few years. Although the plum doesn’t show any sign of blossom – therefore no plums – its leaves look fresh and whole, unmarked by brown scabs, and the branches also look better than previous years. The apple trees are beginning to blossom, as is the little pear tree, which has so far never borne fruit.

They all look healthier than I remember in the past. 

A couple of months ago, I scattered food pellets around their bases and roughly scraped them in. Perhaps for years now the poor trees have been starving, lacking some necessary vitamin. The apples have fruited, but small apples, and the plum has produced a dozen or so delicious specimens.

Now I don’t know – watch this space – our weather is so unseasonably, unreasonably cold (I heard the highest road in the UK, not far from here, was closed last night due to snow!) we may yet have no harvest from those trees. But today, I think they are looking good.

There’s a line in the Episcopal service of communion in which is prayed that we would feed on Jesus in our hearts, by faith, with thanksgiving. Jesus called himself the bread of life. When we are nurtured and fed by him, we bear good fruit, full-sized, free of scabs and disease. 

I’m sure much of the fruit I may have borne in my life has been mis-shapen and small. I’ve not fed as much as I should have. Feeding on Jesus is a bit like the way a cow feeds (I’ve just walked past a pasture of cows and calves). They take a long time over their eating, chewing, digesting, ruminating, ‘chewing the cud’. 

I’m going to go do that now. Read some of Jesus’ words, and then chew over them throughout the day. Today I want the fruit I bear to be healthy and free from disease.