The Young Apple Tree - March 26, 2008:

Down the street, there is this young apple tree.  Lately, it has been full with small, unripened apples.

One day, the boys in the neighborhood were playing catch and their football landed in the apple tree.  They couldn’t reach it, so they grabbed the lower branches and shook the tree as hard as they could until the football fell out.  Along with the football, a couple of bad apples fell too.

The next week, a storm rolled through and the wind blew and blew.  The apple tree was bent this way and that; and some bad apples fell from it once again.

The third week, an earthquake came.  It was quite unusual for these parts.  The ground trembled and the tree shuttered.  More bad apples fell.

The young tree thought to itself, “Boy has this year been rough on me.  I am just starting to grow apples, yet the Universe has been testing me.  It shakes me, stretches me, rattles my branches.  At this rate, will I have any apples left by fall?”

Yet the young tree failed to notice that every time it lost apples, it was always the bad ones, the weak ones, the ones that no one wanted to eat.  All the while, the good apples ripen; they grow larger and fill with sweetness.  Soon our young tree will bear fruit that is ripe and ready to eat.  Those that pass it by may choose to taste an apple and when they do, they will enjoy the deliciousness of it.  And they will tell their friends, “You must try an apple from that young tree down the road.  They are the sweetest apples I have ever tasted.”

Keep growing and stand tall.  Let your roots dig deeper into the earth and your branches stretch towards the sun.  Let your good apples ripen and pay no mind to the ones that are shook loose.  Fall is a ways away and it could be a hot summer, but you are doing fine young tree.