“What is happening to me happens to all fruits that grow ripe.
It is the honey in my veins that makes my blood thicker, and my soul quieter.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
(ripening persimons on the tree / Julie Cook / 2017)
Ripe: fully grown and developed: mature ripe fruit
:having mature knowledge, understanding, or judgment
Unripe: not fully matured
2. not fully prepared or developed; not ready
How do we know when something is ripe?
Color?
Touch?
Taste?
All of the above?
Ripe equates with that which is good.
That which is pleasing.
That which is inviting.
Ripe is as good as it gets….
Unripe is bitter, hard, immature, not ready…
unripe is unproductive.
If you profess to being a Christian,
how does the anyone know whether or not you are ripe and ready?
One basket had very good figs, like those that ripen early; the other basket had very bad figs, so bad they could not be eaten.
Then the Lord asked me, “What do you see, Jeremiah?”
“Figs,” I answered.
“The good ones are very good, but the bad ones are so bad they cannot be eaten.”
Then the word of the Lord came to me:
“This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says:
‘Like these good figs, I regard as good the exiles from Judah,
whom I sent away from this place to the land of the Babylonians.
My eyes will watch over them for their good, and I will bring them back to this land.
I will build them up and not tear them down;
I will plant them and not uproot them.
I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord. They will be my people,
and I will be their God,
for they will return to me with all their heart.
Jeremiah 24:2-7
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