Are you a peach? Or are you a peach? —By Rebecca

Are you a peach? Or are you a peach? I wish you could hear the inflection in my voice as I say that out loud, for then you would fully understand my meaning without an explanation. My husband loves peach pie—it’s one of his favorite pies. I love to make him peach pie—I always use canned peaches (please don’t stop reading if you are one of those people who would never touch canned peaches to make a pie!). My peach pies always come out soft and yummy and it’s because of peaches that are always ready to use. Fresh peaches are not always the right texture and can ruin my peach pie, but I have never ever had trouble anytime of the year using canned peaches. When I think of peaches, I think of juicy, sweet, soft, yummy goodness, but sometimes you get bruised peaches, tasteless peaches, bitter peaches, or hard peaches.

Galatians 5: 22-23 says “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control…” That sounds like a sweet, yummy, and good peach to me. We should be interacting with others out of love, full of joy and peace. We should be patient, we should be kind and good, faithful, gentle and full of self-control. Are you a peach? I know I can recall many times that my interactions with my husband or my children were not full of patience or gentleness…I’m sure you can relate to those moments when you respond quickly to the happenings around you with a snap “Don’t do that.” “Stop that.” Or that big sigh with the thought behind “I can’t believe you did that or said that…” Or maybe it was just the look you gave reflecting the bitter, bruised or hard peach.

Good peaches leave a good taste in your mouth, bad peaches can leave a bitter taste. There are a few things that I can think of that leave a bad taste in my mouth. In the book Adorned by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, she quotes Martin Luther on pg. 111:

It is especially among womenfolk that the shameful vice of slander is prevalent, so that great misfortune is often caused by an evil tongue.

Slander coming from the mouths of others seems to be so common. It is so normal that it seems rare to not hear someone speaking badly about another person. Social media opens the door for even more slander--seemingly without as much repercussion as when speaking it. So often people use Social Media to air everyone else’s dirty laundry. Such tasteless, sour fruit comes from those things. It also seems to be the place to share all the frustrations and offenses, and to vent anger. Sharing is a way to get others to validate our feelings, to get others “on our side.” Often these things are shared in a way that not everyone would necessarily know who all is being talked about—but people read between the lines and make their own assumptions. My family and I started reading a book a while back called Unoffendable – written by Brant Hansen-it is a good book and I recommend it. Many people in our world today are looking for any opportunity to take offense. How many things have you taken offense to today, and how many of your offenses have you shared with others so they too can take offense with you? I bet you can come up with at least one thing you’ve taken offense to! Offense is like eating a bitter peach, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth and will lead to living the life of a bad peach. Are you a peach?

Titus 2 reminds us that “…the older women [are] to be reverent in the way they live, not be slanderers…they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands…” [parenthesis added] The older women are supposed to be helping younger women do these things, but the older women can’t do that unless they are already living their life that way. The women who follow the direction given in Titus 2 are shining examples of good peaches!! And the scripture goes on to say why we should be doing these things—vs 5 “…so that no one will malign the word of God.” This means that if we are not following these, we make God’s word look bad! Are you a peach?

Unfortunately, we all start out as bad peaches (don’t believe me, go back to Genesis chapter 3 and Romans chapters 3 and 5) but we don’t have to stay there. When we believe that Jesus is Lord of our life and we determine to follow his ways, we are given new life—we are given the opportunity to become peaches that are soft, sweet and tasty! He gives us the power to choose his ways and begin responding in ways that reflect the good fruit.

I for one want to be a good peach. How bout you? Are you a peach? Or are you a peach?

All this peach talk and I really want to make a peach pie…I can smell it baking in the oven—the cinnamon and nutmeg…I can see the juicy sweetness oozing out of the crust…I can imagine biting into the soft and tender Hood River peaches that we have (canned of course!)…maybe later…