The Parable of the Cherry Trees

Fruits of the spirit (and a morning ritual in a backyard garden)

Each morning that I am home in June I wake up, throw on a sweatshirt, and walk out to my backyard. My dog — normally content to sleep in as long as I will let her — follows me outside with curiosity about what I could possibly be doing back there in her domain.

I spend a couple minutes staring directly into the morning sun and then I inspect my cherry trees. These trees are my pride and joy — dwarf Rainier and Van cherry trees that I had planted a few years ago once I discovered that the climate where I live is ideal for a whole bunch of fruit trees.

They have (unexpectedly) fruited each year since they were planted, but this is the first year I’ve been in town as they are ripening and before the birds and the raccoons decide to stake their claim on what appears to be abandoned fruit.

This week, the cherries have moved from brief morning ritual to full-blown morning prayer experience.

When I plucked a juicy pink cherry from the tree on Monday morning and popped it into my mouth, I couldn’t tell if it tasted sour because of my freshly-brushed teeth or because it wasn’t quite ready yet. It was the latter as it turns out, but I’ve also held off on brushing my teeth until after I visit my cherries since then. Impatient as ever, I harvested a colander-full of cherries and hoped they might get a little sweeter sitting on my counter… the internet tells me that cherries don’t really do that, but hope springs eternal.

Tuesday morning, the color change was noticeable — we must be getting closer. Tuesday after work I pulled a few particularly vibrant cherries, inspected for bugs, and tested them out. The moment I had been waiting for - definitely ready. I intentionally left them on the tree overnight to give them a bit more time and to preserve my morning cherry ritual.

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When I preach on the parables with college students I tell them if Jesus showed up on a United States college campus in the year 2025 and started teaching, he probably wouldn’t be saying things like, “the Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed” or discussing the harvest. Instead, he’d probably look around and pick up whatever the trendy drinking vessel of the moment is and say, “the Kingdom of heaven is like… this Stanley cup.”

The parables, after all, would have been a mechanism for Jesus to teach using familiar experiences and items relevant to the context of the audience. As a kid who was raised in suburban Minnesota I had enough encounters with agriculture to sort of get these stories, but it wasn’t until this week when I was standing in my kitchen mindfully rinsing and sorting my harvest of cherries that I ever naturally connected plants, produce, and harvests to my understanding of God.

I am prone to impatience, so it is no surprise that I kept trying to pull cherries off my trees before they were truly ready. It’s also no surprise that it turns out cherries don’t continue to ripen off the vine. I have learned this week that cherries are very easy to pluck from the tree when they are ready - when they are not, you run the risk of pulling off tree bark with it which is a hazard to the health of the tree and its ability to produce fruit. What can this teach me about all those times I go striving for something only to remember that God has a tendency to plop the next right thing in my lap? What can it teach me about the ways that I can come more fully into myself only when I am connected to that which offers me growth and nourishment, so that I am “ready” when it is time for the next right thing?

I am prone to toxic self-sufficiency — believing that I must go it alone, be okay by myself, not ask for help. I’ve worked really hard on this, but it still rears its head occasionally. I realized this week that nearly all of my cherries were going to be ripe at the same time. Though my trees are small, they’ve produced so much fruit that I could not possibly eat, process, or preserve all of them before they go bad. The birds and the raccoons can have some (though ideally not at the same time as my dog is out there, as I learned last year when she treed two raccoons who were just trying to enjoy a late night snack) but I sure have a lot of humans I could share with, too. When I put the call out, people were delighted to receive cherries. I’ve been sitting in my office all day with colleagues popping by to pick up their bags. What can this teach me about living in mutually supportive, inter-dependent community? What can I learn about the vision of beloved community that God calls me into?

I worried as I picked, washed and sorted my cherries that because I didn’t use any sort of pest control that there wouldn’t be enough ripe cherries to share to the number of people who wanted them. I tossed out a couple handfuls that had been snacked on by bugs and birds, but I was surprised at the abundance. I was surprised, too, at the connection I found with God in that process of slow, mindful inspection and sorting. I’m not really a prosperity gospel/name-it-and-claim-it/things-happen-for-a-reason theology gal, but I wondered: What can this harvest teach me about God’s provision and timing?

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The love of God is like an abundant harvest of cherries: fine enough alone, but fully embodied in sharing with others.

The work of God is like cherries ripening on a tree: slow, requiring patience and connection to the source, but worth the discipline of attention and patience required for it to bear fruit.

The Kingdom of God is like cherries ripening on a tree. A foolish backyard gardener tried to pluck the cherries from the branches before they were ready. The foolish gardener tried again the next day and the next, gaining wisdom and the fruits of her labor. After sharing of the fruits of the cherry tree, the foolish gardener gained a greater appreciation for patience and a new practice of attention and connection to community and the divine.