My Little Light
just trying to let it shine

The Orchard

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Sam owned a large apple orchard.  Now Sam knew that you could tell a healthy tree by it's fruit.  With this knowledge Sam developed a system to determine how to examine the fruit of each tree to determine it's level of health.

The system Sam developed involved dividing each tree into a grid of many sections.  Overall, the system was fairly intuitive.  A few sectors of bad fruit were expected and tolerated from any given tree.  Minimal effort was put into fixing the bad areas if they were few.  As a matter of fact it seems the same two or three sectors were bad on all the trees.

Of course, any tree that began to exhibit bad fruit in too many sectors was put on a prescribed treatment designed to bring it back into compliance with the system he had so carefully devised.  If the treatment worked the tree would be given back it's classification as a healthy member of the orchard.  Any tree he could not bring back into line with the system he had devised would be thrown out of the orchard, no longer considered part of the group. 

There were certain sectors on every tree that absolutely must bear fruit that Sam found to be healthy.  If any one of these sectors was ever found to have any the slightest blemish to a single piece of fruit the whole tree was thrown out as completely unacceptable.  It didn't matter if every other piece of fruit on the tree was perfect, these particular imperfections resulted in immediate removal from the orchard.

Most of the time other orchard owners would come by and examine the trees that Sam threw out.  Oddly enough the other owners often found that the fruit Sam considered so unhealthy to be perfectly healthy to them.  These trees were plucked up and planted in the orchards of the new owners.

The only trees that never seemed to get picked up for replanting in another orchard were ones that had even the slightest imperfection in section B2.  Those trees were considered unacceptable by all the other owners.  All of the owners would rather let trees with perceived blemishes in sector B2 die than include them as part of their orchards.

Fortunately for the B2 trees there was someone who looked at them and didn't see them as all the rest of the owners did.  The Great Owner simply loved all the trees.  He viewed even those rejected by the rest of the owners as beautiful.  In his eyes they were worthy of love and caring.  He took these trees scorned by the rest of the owners. 

The Great Owner didn't plant these trees in his own personal orchard confined by boundaries and fences.  Rather, he planted them in places where they had the freedom to grow in all their beauty.  Instead of judging them based on a system.  He judged them based on his love for each of them.  His love resulted in grace that accepted each tree as he lovingly grew them in his way. 

Some of them ended up in beautiful meadows, others by peaceful streams, all of them in places where they had space for their roots to grow.  Their branches were able to spread in a show of thanks and praise to the Great Owner.  In the end those trees grown with the freedom, love and care of the Great Owner ended up being stronger, more beautiful, and more healthy than those raised with the guidelines and systems of the other owners.

About Me

Kentucky, United States
I love to write. Whether it's short stories, poems, or something else altogether I hope you will enjoy them. If you feel so inclined I would love to have you leave a comment on the things you read.

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