Summer of Rotten Fruit
Amos 8:1-2
Every spring we plant a garden in our back yard, in hopes that we will have some good vegetables later on in the summer. We usually grow more than we ever need. By the end of the summer we are tired of summer squash, zucchini and tomatoes. We try our hardest to get our excess to our neighbors, but almost all of the m also plant gardens too. A lot of what we normally could harvest goes to waste and never gets used, and the fruits of our summer labor spoils.
In Amos 8:1-2, the prophet has dialog with the Lord on the state of affairs in Israel. The Lord likens Israel to "a basket of summer fruit." The harvest of summer fruit symbolized the ripening of Israel. Just as summer fruit must be eaten when picked or it spoils, Amos was told that Israel will ripen and be spoiled by it’s enemies. This revelation to Amos shows that the Lord intended to let the kingdom of Israel ripen and spoil, if the people did not repent.
This is a real indication of what we need to do with our own lives. If we allow ourselves to ripen in iniquity...in sin...in wickedness...in immorality...without repenting and turning our harvest to the Lord...the Lord will have no choice other than to let us spoil.
The key to not letting our fruits spoil is to seek the Lord in all we do, with thanksgiving for a plentiful harvest and sharing our basket. And if we see the fruits of our labors begin to spoil and rote, we repent.
Our baskets of summer fruit, our lives, are much too precious to let spoil.