STILL COUNTING by Rev. Ken Rickett

Upon moving to Anderson in July 2017, I set out two peach trees, each of them only a foot high. Now they are about 12-15 feet high and have been bearing a few peaches for three years or so. This spring the blooms were so numerous that visions of lots and lots of peaches this coming August! Alas! During and after blooming temperatures fell below freezing a couple of times plus some mornings above freezing but frosty. Rain and dampness prevented the proper spraying at the right time. Would I harvest any peaches this year?

Imagine my surprise when both trees looked loaded with small, tiny peaches! On a limb just two feet long, I counted over 40 peaches…way, way too many for such a tiny limb. Undoubtedly, thinning peaches would be a must-do! I waited a week to see which peaches seemed to be growing the largest, and I pulled up about 100 when I noticed that the trees were self-thinning, that is, the underdeveloped peaches were falling on the ground. On a whim, I decided to pick up the inferior peaches off the ground and count them. After about six weeks, amid the gusty winds that have continually whipped through our community, to date (June 17th), I have counted 2,711, ranging in size from a watermelon seed to a small cherry tomato There is still plenty of growing peaches on the tree, but I am sure I will be adding a few more to my count of discarded fruit.

Why count these no-good peaches? I don’t know. Maybe it was a need to know how many peaches had formed from those numerous blooms and compare with the number I actually harvested later (probably less than 10-15%). Maybe it was a desire to explore Mother Nature’s secrets of survival from potential damage by over-fruiting. Maybe I have a compulsion to count the weirdest things!

As a young boy, cousins and friends would play “kick the can” after dark. Whoever was “it” had to count to 100 before he/she could hunt the rest of us. If found, a person would try to kick the can before “it” can get to the can. But if “it” beat the person to the can, then that person became “it.” OR in playing Monopoly, one either counts his money or his debts! Numerous board or card games require counting…

As a young teenager, my brother and I would take turns carrying a sack of shelled corn to the next-door neighbor who owned an old grist mill. The corn would be ground into cornmeal which was weighed (counted) in pounds and ounces from which a percentage of the cornmeal was payment for grinding.

I am always counting…. every time I make a major purchase, I must count my dollars in a way that I can pay or finance and still buy groceries and pay the bills. Points scored are counted and winners are declared in sports games. All through school and college, grades were a count of right “answers” compared against a standard. Whether conscious of it or not, we all count gallons of gas purchased or we count (estimate) the price of X gallons of gas.

We are, throughout life…still counting! 

Even the Bible tells us to count…OUR DAYS! How can we count our days if we don’t know how many days we have yet to live? Yeah, we all can count the days we have already lived…. but that is all. We may have one additional day or thousands of additional days to live. How do we “count our days?”

We count our days to measure, to take stock, to manage goals, to fulfill dreams, to count the cost, if not in value, then in energies to be spent, or to achieve a level of satisfaction or accomplishment, to both give and be blessed by the love of God and one another.

There are some things we don’t count…such as our own good works! God counts those! You may give thanks or gratitude for the good works that I have done toward you (even if you do not share that with me) and I may give thanks for the good works you do for me (even if I do not mention it). BUT GOD DOES THE COUNTING!

 We “number our days” in the humble acknowledgment that we are to remain faithful followers of God as revealed in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.

 We number our days by knowing God is “... STILL COUNTING” our faithfulness! With GRACE and not condemnation!