Days Like Blackberries

It’s blackberry season in Ireland right now, and our family has a yearly tradition of picking them. They’re not hard to find. The vines are growing in the hedges along the roads, reaching out into the paths in the woods, climbing over the old stone walls in the fields, and all of them covering themselves in juicy, plump, sweet little berries. Like candy, except healthier, and with thornier packaging. And free! They just grow, right out of the ground, in loads of public places where we can pick and eat and keep as many as we want. Last weekend we got almost four pounds on one family walk which are now (thanks to my wife) three jars of delicious homemade jam. Can you believe we live in a world where there are jam-bushes growing wild? 

These treats come every year. But they don’t come all year—if we want to enjoy them, we have to take them while they’re ripe. That’s the way it is with most of the natural gifts God has built in to the world. They come in their own seasons. Every year, we look forward to picking blackberries, and enjoying them. Every year, the blackberries look the same as the year before, but of course they are not the same berries. Last year’s berries are gone, like last year’s apples, like last year’s wildflowers. Speaking of wildflowers—while we were picking the blackberries last weekend I noticed some wildflowers growing in the middle of an old ruin. They were lovely, so I snapped a photo:

It struck me that the people who have come in and out of those ruins throughout the years are a lot like the wildflowers and blackberries growing there now. We bloom and grow with the life God gives us, and then we’re gone. As King David wrote in Psalm 103 :15-16,

“As for man, his days are like grass—
he blooms like a flower of the field;
when the wind passes over, it vanishes,
and its place remembers it no more.”

Many have come before us. Maybe their lives were as delightful and fruitful as the flowers and the berries of years gone by, but they are all gone now and it’s our turn. It’s our season. It’s our time to grow and bear fruit in the world God made for us. This is our opportunity to live well, and this opportunity won’t last. We must take it while it’s ripe. Thankfully, we can take it in the assurance that even when our place in this world is lost and we are forgotten like the blackberries and wildflowers and people who have lived here before us, the One who made us and all of these things has a better memory than we do. He does not forget his children who put their trust in him. Ever. He does not stop giving them his life or the bounty of his good gifts. Ever. As the next verse in Psalm 103 says,

“But from everlasting to everlasting
the loving devotion of the LORD
extends to those who fear Him”

His love is everlasting, but the season we’re in is not. We’re here on his earth, by his design, for a limited time. This is our chance to live well. This is our season.