Long Arms.

Hi Wolfies!
I feel like I need to apologize for having been so absent lately! I have a few really big projects I am working on and…well…. pretty much it’s taken over my life.

I never want to leave my studio.
I don’t want to hang out.
I just want to work.

Which, is a good thing and a bad thing. A good thing because I am getting a lot of really cool work done.

A bad thing because it’s beautiful outside. And I never leave my studio.
For those of you who don’t live in climates where Fall is simply the most beautiful time of the year, and where you don’t understand Anne of Green Gables quote:

I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.

then let me apologize for the following slew of pictures.

 

 

In the little bit of time I did vacate my studio and take these pictures, I got that overwhelmed feeling again. Much like the feeling Ihad when it was wild black raspberry season.

Oh, and did I mention it is also walnut season?

Turns out I have walnut trees. Which is awesome. But now I need to figure out how to harvest them...after I figure out how to leave my studio.

 Anyway, I digress.

Last weekend my dad wanted me to help him pick apples at a friend’s house.

So off we traipsed, though the looming clouds suggested a coming storm.

My dad makes a mean applesauce and come this time of year it’s like he goes into a trance. But it’s a trance that produces beautiful, pink, cinnamony goodness, so we are cool with it.

My poppy.

I had never picked apples with him before, though. When we got to our friend’s farm I was immediately put on the alert as they have this dog.

And you all know how I feel about dogs.

I don’t feel good things about dogs : )

No. Unfortunately.
They….scare me.

And the ones that don’t scare me shed hair on me. So, put together some fear and lots of dog hair and you end up with my dismissal of almost the entire species (I say “almost” because there are….4…dogs who have made their way into my heart).

 

But my dad, being the good dad that he is, says “Don’t worry. He won’t hurt you. See: ‘Hey pup!!’” and then he reached out and pet the silly thing.

While that made me feel better, knowing that my father wasn’t afraid of dogs and that the dog didn’t want to maul my father, I wish it would have made the dog feel that he could bypass the part where he comes over and smells my legs.

Alas. Twas not to be. So I just stood there with my eyes closed and prayed he went away.

Which he finally did.

(Praise the Lord)

And then I finally was able to open my eyes and move out of my statue-esque pose.

Not to be delayed any longer, I started at the first tree I saw and just went to town.

Pre-polishing.

Post-polishing.

 

Did you know that different kinds of apples taste different?
Yes, I know that sounds super elementary, but I am serious. And I don’t mean that they all just taste like apples but a little different.

No.

Some apples taste like my perfume.

Some taste like the smell of flowers.
Some taste like grapes.
It is absolutely incredible.
And did you also know that when the wind knocks apples off the tree it gives them bruises?

Yeah.

Totally.
So know that if you buy an apple from the store without a bruise on it—that baby didn’t fall off the tree because it was ripe. Nope. That sweet delicacy was picked as it still clung to the tree limb.

You know, since I have come back from Israel, as I read through my Bible everything seems so much simpler. All of these concepts that we here in the West try to figure out and write theologies about, etc. don’t seem complicated anymore. Like the “to live is Christ” concept: not complicated.
Those things are said in normal, everyday language.
Because the gospel is for all people; normal, everyday people.
No surprise then that as I am picking apples suddenly a spiritual truth dawns on me and now seems…simple.

Sometimes apples are really high up on the tree. Much too tall, even for my taller than average frame, for me to pick. And even though I climb up into the tree, or stand on a bucket, or get a ladder, I could never reach them.

But some really smart farmer, somewhere along the line, came up with this little contraption.

And really, it’s not little at all:

This is what I like to call, The Apple Picker.

Because it picks apples.
It gets all those high up ones that no one else can.
I let my father use it the whole time; he seems much more up for the job.

Which, as he was calmly picking apple after apple and I was running around, literally jumping off the ground to pick the apples I could reach, the thought occurred, “How great it would be to have such a long arm; you could reach things nobody else could reach.”

And that sounds strongly familiar; like one of those verses we try to theorize about: “Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save….” (Isaiah 59:1)

Wow.
It’s that simple.
I can run around frantic, jumping and climbing ladders and standing on buckets and stooping lower than normal,  trying to pick up all these things and people and concepts and apples that are BRUISED FROM THE FALL, yet still will never able to reach some things; I will never be tall enough, strong enough, I can never climb as high as I need to get to them, but…. But surely a God with a really long arm could reach them…
Nothing. Nobody. There is not a situation or soul alike that can’t be reached by a Father with a really long arm.

Wow.

Not complicated.
Isn’t that just the most beautiful thing to know?! That God has a really long arm??! An arm that IS long enough to reach all those we sometimes feel can never be reached.
Hallelujah, he is taller than all the trees.

And I stared at the overwhelming bounty, knowing that I could pick pick pick all day long and still there would be apples on the trees, I though, “You know, of all the apples that get eaten in the world-- I bet it’s like less than 1% of them are picked by the people who eat them.”

It’s not because there are not enough apples, or not enough people, or not enough places to go get them. No when it comes to apples, and here I go again, when it comes to….everything else…. the harvest….well…the harvest is plentiful. There is enough to go around.
But picking apples is work. I mean, even in the cold and wind and slight rain, I was sweating.
And who wants to sweat and work to get the harvest? Not many. Most want to get the unbruised kind that get delivered to them.
So, I guess I could say, “The workers are few.”

Ta-da.

Sorry, Wolifes. I had to do it.

Do you see, though, how REALLY, this stuff isn’t complicated? The gospel and God’s call on our life, is in everyday language?

Like, so simple enough that someone who had no knowledge of anything other than the simplest concept in the world (i.e. gardening—or picking apples) could fully understand what Jesus was talking about:
God can reach anyone with his really “long arm,” but he wants us to be workers in his fields, making something out of that which is bruised by the fall.

Which, yikes.

Because faith is a whole lot easier to theorize about than to practice.
But, the simplicity of the gospel and its call on the Believers life leaves little room for excuses. This stuff is simple to know; and I feel like we will be held responsible for that which we know.

Let’s trust in his long arm…and ignore the bruises.