Lessons from Acorns

I have been raking leaves.  It is the first of many leaf gathering sessions that will take place in my yard between now and the coming spring.  I have a love-hate relationship with the trees in my yard.  The trees are beautiful and their canopies have really grown and filled out nicely since we moved here 14 years ago.  They provide excellent shade in summer that helps cool our home, but that same shade makes it impossible for grass to grow.  The fall foliage is particularly brilliant this year, the best in many years, but I have allergies to oak.  So my battle with the leaves always turns into a physical battle of sneezing and itchy throat.  Not to mention the fact that the red oaks in our yard hang on to the last of their leaves until the new leaves are ready to come out in spring, so our leaf gathering lasts for months. Yes, it is definitely a love-hate relationship.

This year there is a new twist in the leaf gathering.  Well, it is not actually new, just more noticeable.  It is the acorns.  If you can have a crop of acorns then we have the largest crop of acorns I have ever seen.  If I had a nickel for every acorn on my lawn.... Well, you get the idea. 

While raking the first leaves I was amazed at the number of acorns.  They were plentiful and they were huge.  We have always had acorns, but not since we moved here have we had this many.  They are literally piles of them on the ground.  The other day, the wind was blowing and they were falling and hitting my son in the head as he played soccer in the driveway.  The complicated relationship continues.

While I continued to pick up leaves and let the acorns sift to the ground, I began to wonder about their abundance.  Why were there so many this year?  Then it hit me.  Well actually, I think God pointed it out to me.  The acorns are plentiful for the same reason the foliage is so colorful this year.  The drought ended.  For the first summer in many summers, we had plenty of rain.  Sometimes a little more than we thought we wanted, but we had rain.  The oak trees are fruitful because they have been well-watered. 

And there is the truth.  The trees are fruitful because they are well-watered.  That's the phrase the Holy Spirit drilled into my spirit.  “Keep yourself well-watered, Rhonda, and you will continue to bear a bountiful harvest.  If you stay in a spiritual drought condition your fruit is skimpy, shriveled, and sparse.”  Wow, I love it when God talks to me in easy to understand, direct applications.  I could not possibly misunderstand what He was saying to me. 

There are so many examples from nature that apply to our spiritual walk with Christ.  This is why the apostle Paul could, without pause, write in Romans 1:20, “For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”  (NIV)   I am uniquely thankful that God is willing to teach me and show me things about myself and about His wonderful, eternal nature in a mundane activity like raking leaves.

So look for the lessons.  They are out there.  Some of the most meaningful lessons are in the everyday, work-a-day, I've-done-this-a-million-times kind of things.  God shows up, and all of a sudden an acorn becomes a mighty oak of a life lesson.  Don't miss them.  Your next teachable moment with God may be while washing dishes, or filling your car with fuel, or purchasing groceries, or tending a sick child, or looking into the eyes of a student in your choir, or walking along a well-known path.  Be ready.  Be filled with the Word, so that when the lesson comes, you will know exactly how to apply it.  Stay well-watered.

How will you stay soggy and fruitful?

(This article was published in Share the Music, a newsletter published by Brentwood-Benson and distributed by Hal Leonard Corporation.  It is used here by permission.)