“So when the woman saw the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of the fruit and ate…” Genesis 3:6

Low-Hanging Fruit

My little brother and I used to go to our babysitter’s house during the summer months. Her backyard was full of fruit trees and forts. The forts were really abandoned chicken coops scattered with feathers and dirt, alongside sheds with rusty mowers, rakes, and hand trowels, but our imaginations made them prisons and fortresses on battlefields. We prisoners were only allowed to eat the low-hanging plums that hung hot and sweet in the trees. Wasps and bees buzzed us as we bit into that sticky, dripping purple fruit. On hot summer afternoons, anything wet tasted good.

Low-hanging fruit is right before the eyes, a temptation for anyone who is hungry for something. You can’t help but see it as you walk along. It seems to cry out, “Eat me! You know I’ll be amazing!” Low-hanging fruit is in your face, and seems to get in the way of moving forward.

There’s nothing wrong with eating fruit, of course, but it’s a good way of looking at temptation. You may go looking for that low-hanging fruit—you’ve visited that tree before, and you know the dripping sweetness of it, and for some reason you forget that you got stung last time you ate it, or you got a bellyache. Or you may come across the tree as you’re on some other errand, the fruit beckoning, catching at you, calling your name to come closer, take a look, have a taste.

If you sidle up to that sin tree—just to get a closer look, to see what’s there—you’re going to hear the enemy whispering that this Christianity, this life of following Christ, is restrictive. You’ve misunderstood God’s intent—He never meant for you to say no to what He created after all… and like Eve, you succumb. You see that it’s good to eat. You didn’t taste it yet, but you saw it, and you didn’t look away, even though God has said, “That won’t be good for you.”

If a doctor says to me, “You will die if you drink poison,” then I can assure you I will not drink poison. Never in a million years would I drink poison, even if it smelled like lilac. Why, then, do we covet sin, when God has just as plainly told us we will die if we sin? We’re just like Eve. We don’t think we will die. Not any time soon, anyway. We tell ourselves that God was talking long-range—not here, not now, not me.

When the low-hanging fruit grabs my attention, I choose to shift my gaze to the horizon, that I may focus on the prize, the goal, the end of the race.

“God, grant me spiritual concentration to focus on You, for You are my prize. I choose to inherit an everlasting kingdom rather than enjoy the low-hanging fruit of sin. By Your Spirit, my eyes will be open to only You. Amen.”