Being a parent is the closest way I can imagine what God’s experience working with people might be like. I learn so much about his joys, frustrations and just plain funny situations I find myself and my children in. There is mess. There is order, learning, fun and awe. There is pure joy when my daughter creates something new or pronounces things in her funny way. All of it is beautiful to me.
Today this is what I learnt.
Lily and I were harvesting some seed potatoes she had planted with a friend and doing some weeding while we were outside. After tipping the soil on to the new garden area she went up to her dwarf apple tree and noticed that the apple had grown. Maybe it is a feature of apple trees in their first years, or maybe we are not great applists, but we only have the one apple on this tree.
I know that Lily likes moving things (this is a phase she is going through) and especially removing garden things given half a chance. She has been known to try free-range gardening without permission at other people’s homes. She had already noticed that it looked good. So I said to Lily, Please do not touch the apple. And do not pick it. Otherwise it will not grow any bigger and you will not enjoy it as much.
She took the apple.
She did not eat the apple. Instead we made a game of taking a lot of photos of it, and one of them is shown here. Although it may look the size of a football, it is more like a golf ball. The sort of thing you could jam a vuvuzela with, for example.
But it got me thinking. Whatever fruit was growing when God said No, maybe it wasn’t as good as it looked. Maybe it just wasn’t ready yet.
jam and giraffes 
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