RIPE

Nathan Attwood

Pastor, Marianna First United Methodist Church

"For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly." Romans 5:6.

I once served as an associate pastor at a very large church with a very wise senior pastor, Dr. Lawson Bryan (who was later elected bishop). Dr. Bryan was extremely positive, energetic, wise, and gracious. I was blessed to serve with him and I learned so much from being around him for four years.

I must admit that there were a few things about him that took some time to understand. Perhaps the thing that frustrated me the most was that I often saw things I thought needed done in the church, sometimes things I thought were urgent. Oftentimes I thought he needed to be more proactive and aggressive in dealing with those situations. Dr. Bryan was never pushy or aggressive, and being young and impetuous, I was sometimes impatient about change I thought should be pursued more directly.

One summer, while vacationing, I had a revelation about Dr. Bryan's approach that changed me and taught me to be more like my mentor. That summer I was visiting my grandmother's vacation home in Rhode Island and I was picking blackberries. The blackberries grow wild there and they are plentiful late in the summer. I would take a large kitchen pot and fill it with big juicy blackberries from trails and along stone walls when I took my daily walk.

I noticed that when I picked a blackberry, even if it looked ripe, I would pull it very gently. If it fell easily into my hand, I would put it into the pot. If it didn't fall easily into my hand, I took it as a sign that the berry wasn't ripe. I didn't force it. There was no need. There were plenty of ripe berries to pick. The berries that weren't ripe weren't sweet anyway. Besides, I would be coming back to the same berries the next day, so if they weren't ripe today, I had no need to force them because I could always come back and pick them tomorrow.

Dr. Bryan developed the ministries of the church like I picked berries. There were always so many things that needed doing, people to be served, programs to be established, ideas to be developed, opportunities to be explored. Dr. Bryan never needed to force anything because he was so energetic and proactive about everything that needed doing at the church that something was always ripening and something was always falling off the vine into his hand.

What I'm describing is something like patience, but it's not exactly the same thing as patience. Patience is about waiting until the right time. What I'm describing is also about waiting for the right time, but it's about something more. It's about being so constantly and gently active in cultivating the good that something is always finally coming to fruition. It's about doing enough preparation and cultivation that there's always an abundance to be harvested, so there's never any need to force anything before it's ready.

God is timeless, and yet, God has perfect timing. Romans says that "at the right time God died for the ungodly." Specifically, the time God chose to send his Son to die for you was not at the moment of your best deserving but at the moment of your deepest weakness ("while we were still weak"), at the time not of our deserving but of our need. Galatians 4:4-5 says, "at the right time God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law." The timing of the appearing of the Son of God was just right, just when the world was ripe, just perfect for when the world was ready and when all of human history was best prepared for Christ's redemptive work.

We often say we need to be patient because God will act when God is ready, that he will bring what he wants for us when he is ready, that he is never late and always on time. These things are true. It's also true that if we are following his Spirit to always be cultivating, and if we are always trying the berries to see which are ripe, something is always ready to be picked. It's always the right time for something. Sometimes it takes a little time, attention, and effort to find out what's ripe for the picking. It's as much a shame to let the ripe berries rot on the vine as it is to yank them off the vine before they are ready.