I felt joy rise in my heart that day as I took another bite of an apple at the fall picnic.

I lay on the blanket, watching my children frolicking in the water nearby and delighted in another bite of the fall fruit someone had picked from the apple tree above us.

And I offer the fruit of my labor to them, to the world, as I watch my Homeschooled children help the younger ones pull themselves up on the log in the water.

These are kind people, our children.

And as their sibling bickers reach me even here, far away, I am reminded that though they are still annoying, as all of us humans are, still, the fruit from this fall season, of a season of Homeschooling has been good.

I delight in this.

We had to live with these humans, so we were forced to prune the trees and apply fertilizer even though it stung them sometimes.

We couldn’t turn aside and try to forget unbecoming behavior in our children because the school bus was coming soon. We saw them again at lunch, and then they were still there right after lunch, an hour later, and into the evening. This behavior has GOT to be dealt with. This rot in the heart has GOT to be addressed, we would finally admit.

Love drove us out of hiding.

“Show us how You see each child,” we would beg our God in prayer, longing for His picture of them, which was the sun and rain they needed to flourish.

One child was like a strong tree that would grow a thick branch in just a moment, but it grew directly into another sibling’s eye, or into my face – Ouch! Jesus would offer us a saw. Prune the tree, He would remind us.

And so, we did.

And then God pruned my tree, too.

A lot of sweat has gone into the farming of my fall crop. We had many seasons of scraping and tilling hard earth under the hot sun. We didn’t make a lot of progress. But sometimes we would delight to find a small patch of rich, dark soil, and we would quickly plant something there in their hearts before they noticed. And some of these offerings took root, though many plants languished or had to be replanted.

But the gardens of their hearts were tended as God tended my heart simultaneously, teaching me to love.

And God quickly planted something, a small plant in a tiny patch of rich soil that He found in my heart one day, soil among a seemingly endless expanse of hard, clay-baked earth. He planted it that day when I wasn’t looking. Homeschool, he bid my heart before this schooling adventure began.

And the tears came whenever Homeschooling was mentioned for reasons I couldn’t articulate, watering the soil around my heart a bit more with the sacrifice of this massive gardening project.

But it was worth it.

And as another graying hair testifies to a beginning fall season of my life, I remember the fruit in my heart that was not there before this gardening adventure, and I am thankful that God had been tilling my soul all along, too.

And so, I took another bite of that apple, feeling happy.

So let’s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don’t give up, or quit.

The Message

Is God calling and beckoning you toward Homeschooling, friend?

Or to another adventure, perhaps?

Get going, friend! Start now! The fruit of following Jesus on an adventure is worth all the hard labor of past seasons.

And may you savor many fall apples, explosive in flavor, as God scrapes off the edges of each other, not unlike iron sharpening iron, as love pours from God’s heart through us, through our kids, and then to the world.

And I took another bite of that fall apple.

And I felt love swell in my heart with each bite, love that came with this harvest.

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Photo Credit – Apples Ready For Harvest by Timotheus Fröbel on Unsplash

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