Are You Ripe For The Picking

If you look at the calendar you will see that the first day of fall is right around the corner. Fall is one of my favorite times of the year.  I love the cooler weather that tends to come with it. The changing of the leaves if you live up north. However, fall means that the time for all those fresh fruits and vegetables is just about over.

Most of us would probably agree that there’s nothing better than a fresh garden tomato, is there? But they don’t have a very long shelf life, do they? Imagine that you are looking for one. You just happen to find one in the bottom of a vegetable bowl in the kitchen. Somehow it had gotten hidden in there. It was that good deep red color. It was beautiful. You can’t wait to throw that thing between a couple of slices of bread.

But you didn’t notice the little bit of liquid in the bottom of the bowl. As soon as you touched it, you knew. It was squishy. The skin just about fell off when I tried to pick it up. You see, even though that tomato looked red and ripe and beautiful, it was completely rotten. The only thing it was good for was to throw it away. It had become disgusting. Fit only for destruction. That is the picture that God gave Amos here in this vision.